Macro Photography My Way

Today I picked up a fallen leaf from the grass because I had decided to tackle Macro Photography today. Take a look at the Photograph below and post your comments.

Macro Leaf
Autumn Leaf

What is Macro Photography?

The definition of Macro Photography is ” Extreme Close-Up Photography”. This Genre can be very complicated if you want to make sure that your entire Image is in Focus. Depending on the Angle / Perspective of your shot only one portion of your Photograph will be in sharp focus. Unlike Landscape Photography where you can mitigate this by closing down your aperture. Unfortunately In Macro Photography this adjustment is insufficient. The only way to attain a Tack Sharp Photograph of the entire subject is to take a series of Photographs each with a slightly different Point of Focus. You continue this process until you have a series of Photographs with each area of the Subject in Focus. The Amount of images you need to take depends on multiple factors. One of the Main ones is how close you are to the Subject. The closer you are the more images are needed.

What is Focus Stacking

Focus Stacking is when you Import a batch of Images as outlined above and then import them into your photo editing software. The next step is to Perform a Focus Stacking Operation. Most Apps such as Affinity Photo and Photoshop have. this functionality built in but there are also specialist apps that perform this one task.The Software combines all the batch images and with a sexy Algorithim line up and match all the images into a single image. This only works however if you have taken the batch of photos in sequence from front to back or left to right. There is also a very handy piece of equipment called a Focus Rail which is installed on top of the Tripod and The Camera is mounted on the rail.