@jerry Nice, but I never got the point of macro rails (unless it's for a bellows system). If you've got a subject that won't move for this long while you setup multiple shallow DoF shots at wider apertures, you could just take a single long exposure shot at narrower aperture and deeper DoF. There's lenses that will get you essentially diffraction-free shots at f/16 and that becomes f/32 with a 2x macro extender... Then take a single additional shot at widest aperture for creamy bokeh and voila. Or am I missing something?
@tildalwave great question. Two things to consider:
Most lenses are much sharper at the fast end of their aperture range.
Even with a tiny aperture, the dof is quite narrow. This pic; for example, is at f29 and while much of the column is in focus, the pedals are a bit soft
@jerry That's a nice work, I actually prefer some peripheral softness, it just looks more natural and guides the eyes towards the sharpest area. About macro-focusing rails, OK I'll concede that it's a lens-agnostic tool which is nice, but I personally prefer macro-focusing teleconverters (basically TCs with a built in helicoid) and slow-ish vintage lenses fur such work. I also kinda like thinner DoF and "moodier" shots, for lack of a better word (see pic). But dunno, maybe I'm just lazy and can't be bothered stacking shots too often :D
@EmperorHenry that is a macro rail for a camera. When shooting macro pictures, the in focus area is about 1mm deep or less. This lets me take a picture, move the camera forward a tiny bit, take another, and so on until I’ve taken picture of the whole object such that small slivers are in focus. Then, I’ll use a focus stacking application to merge all those pics to end up with one picture where the whole subject is in focus.
@jahanson@EmperorHenry it is far less exciting or difficult than it seems. I set the camera up, get it to focus on the closest part of the flower, flip the camera to manual focus so it doesn’t change on me, then I use my camera remote to take a pic, turn the knob a bit, take another pic, etc till done. Then i put the cfexpress card in my computer, select all the pics in the set in Lightroom or photoshop and click the focus stack option. Without the automation in software, it would not be worth it.
Dude in a different group I follow used CNC commands, rail... and I think the camera focus was programmed somehow too. It was a long time ago. Doubt I could ever find it again...
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