Lichen

I'm learning new stuff every day. I haven't played much with the macro lens yet, so last night I thought I would remedy that. So, I took it down by the creek to shoot some lichen. I also hadn't had much experience with focus bracketing, so two birds- one stone so to speak.

I find that close-ups of lichen is remarkably beautiful. On the technical side, it took me a few tries to get the bracketing figured out, but once I did, it was very simple on the R6II. I processed the images in Canon DPP 4, which was also very simple.

On the doing the process well, I've got some stuff to learn. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression I needed to shoot these macro shots with as shallow of a depth of field as possible. But doing so gives me such a short focal distance that on some of these I had to shoot over 200 shots to get the whole scene in focus. (Perhaps I'm not making a big enough step. I started at 3, but moved to 4 later on.). So, am I missing something here? The point of focus stacking is in most cases to reduce boca. So why would I want to shoot with low aperture in the first place? It seems like I should be shooting with a higher aperture and compensating with shutter speed and ISO. Then I wouldn't need such a huge number of shots to stack. The big number of shots doesn't seem to be a problem for the camera, but it takes forever to process in DPP4.

Thalweg said:

I'm learning new stuff every day. I haven't played much with the macro lens yet, so last night I thought I would remedy that. So, I took it down by the creek to shoot some lichen. I also hadn't had much experience with focus bracketing, so two birds- one stone so to speak.

I find that close-ups of lichen is remarkably beautiful. On the technical side, it took me a few tries to get the bracketing figured out, but once I did, it was very simple on the R6II. I processed the images in Canon DPP 4, which was also very simple.

On the doing the process well, I've got some stuff to learn. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression I needed to shoot these macro shots with as shallow of a depth of field as possible. But doing so gives me such a short focal distance that on some of these I had to shoot over 200 shots to get the whole scene in focus. (Perhaps I'm not making a big enough step. I started at 3, but moved to 4 later on.). So, am I missing something here? The point of focus stacking is in most cases to reduce boca. So why would I want to shoot with low aperture in the first place? It seems like I should be shooting with a higher aperture and compensating with shutter speed and ISO. Then I wouldn't need such a huge number of shots to stack. The big number of shots doesn't seem to be a problem for the camera, but it takes forever to process in DPP4.View attachment 31662View attachment 31663View attachment 31664

Click to expand...

I'm not sure why the photo data didn't show up. The top photo was f3.2, 1/800, ISO250, Middle photo f3.2, 1/80, ISO250, Bottom photo f3.5 1/250, ISO400. All shot on R6 Mark II, Tamron 90mm macro lens.

Thalweg said:

I'm not sure why the photo data didn't show up.

Click to expand...

My theory is you need to add a second hard return between photos or the metadata doesn’t show up.

StevenAunan said:

My theory is you need to add a second hard return between photos or the metadata doesn’t show up.

Click to expand...

Didn't work

You don't have to open the lens all the way to do focus stacking. There are equations for it and guidelines ("rules"), but since you are using the built-in focus bracketing, it is best to just do trial and error.

But OK, one guideline is that the effective aperture should be around f/22 or wider, to avoid too much diffraction. If you are shooting at a magnification of 1x, then a nominal aperture of f/11 is an effective aperture of f/22.

So shoot at f/11 and see how that works out. If you go to a magnification higher than 1x, open up a bit.

Lighting is another matter. If you are using a tripod, it won't be a problem, but it can get trickier if you have to use flash. But - one step at a time.

I'm liken it

I went out into the backyard and shot a rock with some lichen on it at f11. I changed the number of shots to 15. It was about noon when I did this, so the lighting was terrible. But it proved the point. F11 makes a whole bunch more sense. Thanks Archibald. I don't know where I got the idea where I got the idea that I needed to do this at a low aperture. I watch too much YouTube and I get things confused. I'm attaching the shot I just took, It's not good. It's out of focus in the lower right corner. I had it in a focus increment of 4. Perhaps it needs to be narrower.

Thalweg said:

I went out into the backyard and shot a rock with some lichen on it at f11. I changed the number of shots to 15. It was about noon when I did this, so the lighting was terrible. But it proved the point. F11 makes a whole bunch more sense. Thanks Archibald. I don't know where I got the idea where I got the idea that I needed to do this at a low aperture. I watch too much YouTube and I get things confused. I'm attaching the shot I just took, It's not good. It's out of focus in the lower right corner. I had it in a focus increment of 4. Perhaps it needs to be narrower.View attachment 31683

Click to expand...

I've come to the conclusion that DPP4 doesn't transfer the metadata from the photos. This was shot at f11, 1/100, ISO 100

We went for a walk in the mountains today. The leaves have all fallen off of the aspens already, and the lighting was terrible, so I shot some more lichen instead of landscape stuff. These were focus bracketed shots (45 shots each) using my R6 MII with a Tamron 90MM Macro lens. F9, 1/160 sec, ISO 100.
Compiled in Canon DPP 4.