Playing around with some macro shots.

Very nice. Camera or photo editing?

@Hallow.
Thanks.
Camera.
I did some close up of some Airplant trichomes in the bromeliads / Tillandsia forum a little bit ago. I used an inadequate lens with extension tubes when I took those.
Today I was taking some pictures and got out the 105mm f2.8 macro lens.

You have taken some amazing pictures of air plants, Steve. I recently acquired a macro lens and gave it a trial run today, with some moderately satisfactory results.




Had to stand back to get these pics



My extreme closeup pics tend to suffer from focus problems, which I will have to work out. But I like the new lens a lot and it will be fun to explore how it works (100mm, f/2.8).

@Baja_Costero

Thanks for the kind words.

Macro work you have a very small depth of field.
Are you using a tripod?
Closing the aperture, higher f number gives workable depth of field. My lens can go to f/45 which would result in more depth of field then what is in the pictures. I think most the above pictures I was at f/22.
Just to give you an idea, some of my shot are 6 or more seconds long.
When taking pictures of the plants like post here, I shoot everything in manual mode, including focusing.

Here's the info from the fist picture in the post.



Shooting setup.

That is very helpful, thank you. I have been letting the camera do most of the deciding, but I would welcome a greater depth of field. I do use a tripod for close shots. I also like to take handheld pics on the patio and in the garden, and I can get decent pics of objects up to about 6 inches without having to do extreme gymnastics to get everything in frame.

Yeah, now that I check, I was using f/5.6, so I will dial that up.

@Baja_Costero

Your welcome.

One other thing, there's always at least one other thing I think of after I post. Do you use a remote, shutter cable or timer function on the camera?
I will use one of the above methods to eliminate any possible vibration when pressing the shutter button. Usually the 2 second timer on the camera if available is enough.

@Baja_Costero

Made me play some more....
Before I post the pics, let me tell you a story....

Many years ago, I got my first camera, in 1988/1989. I traded a 1969 Mickey Mantle Tops baseball card for it. At the time a great trade for me, especially for the use I got out of the camera, Pentax K-1000. But today, I'd like to have that card back. LOL
I mainly wanted to shoot macro pictures. I remember the day when I took a roll of 24 exposure film in to be processed and instead of 2 ok shots, I had 22 good shots and only 2 bad shots. The turning point of understanding how to take macro shots for me.
This was done with the help of a book, John Shaw's Closeups in Nature. That is where I learned about the f-stop and other settings to get the camera to mostly do what you want it to.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817440526/

Looks like a readable PDF version here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0817440526/

A lot of the settings explained are relevant on today's digital cameras.

Now with digital, it is very easy to play with settings and finding the correct settings without spending lots of money on film and processing.

One last thing, shooting at the lowest ISO your camera allows, and in RAW format will give you the absolute best pics.
With RAW, you have manipulate the picture in an editing program. And of course the lower the ISO settings the longer the picture needs to be.
I never really compared the difference before of a camera processed JPEG to a RAW image. Since I never sold any pictures and they are just for me, I always let the camera process it for me in a JPEG format.

Almost sounds like an experiment is needed here.... LOL

I like the Pachypodium stem detail and that last plant looks like an an octopus.

I am able to use f/22 with half second exposures in my afternoon shooting area, and I did a whole series of shots proving to myself what you told me about aperture and depth of field. My tripod is not proving up to the task, and I think I need to mount the lens, not the camera, to get the balance right. But things are moving in the right direction.

Thank you for the book recommendation.

Not sure if this is pertinent: I noticed with long exposure times that the biggest issue is not the tripod so much as the fact that if you do not have a remote trigger or are willing to use a timer you are still handling the camera to take the picture - that causes vibration. I got a remote trigger for my camera and that pretty much resolved the issue of stability, but I did originally invest in a decent tripod - these days there are some good tripods to be hand for not that much money.

Can you recommend a tripod?

I'm a fan of Manfrotto.

My first good tripod was back when the name was Bogen, 2010 they became Manfrotto.
I purchased a fairly heavy Bogen tripod and 3 way head.

Over the years carrying this heavy tripod out in the field, and the fact they design tripods to get down to ground level which mine did not, and also made the center column with a push of a button go from vertical to horizontal. I decided to buy a lighter tripod with these features. I would love a carbon fiber but can not bring myself to pay the $$.
I have a 190XProB. I also tried a ball head instead of the 3 way head. I like the ball head better then a 3 way head. My ball head is a 486RC2.

This looks like the updated version of the tripod that I have, but no bubble level.
https://www.manfrotto.com/us-e...

Ball head.
https://www.manfrotto.com/us-e...

I also had a few inexpensive tripods... I'll I say is that you get what you pay for.
Maybe someone here can recommend an inexpensive tripod, but the first 1 or 2 I've tried when I first started out where not worth the time or money.
I've had 2 tripods from Bogen / Manfrotto, first in the 1990's and the current one probably right around the name change 2010. Never had an issue with either one.

I have had good use out of this one:

ESDDI Camera Tripod, DSLR Tripod with 360° Ball Head, 64" Aluminum Tripod with Monopod 1/4" Quick Release Plate and Phone Holder for Vlog,Travel and Work
by ESDDI STORE
Learn more: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSJXHY9/

Thank you both for the recommendations.

Hi all
Still quite new to photography so I am enjoying this thread . I have to say I am sort of getting the 'what' I need to do with the settings if I am not totally getting the 'why' . I have read several online explanations of what f stop is and I have say I am none the wiser
I have two compact cameras canon G9 and Samsung NX3000 . I am toying with the idea of macro lens adapters or I could get a macro lens for my iPhone 11. I think I could maybe even get a full lens for the samsung. The canon can take RAW shots but the Samsung cannot. Am I wasting my time and money with this approach . Is it DLSR route only to take better macro shots. Anyone have any thoughts
Steve

I had a G9 (now have a G7x) and when I got my basic Canon DSLR (EOS Rebel T7i, similar to the 2000D outside the US) I found that a lot of the pictures I was taking ended up worse than what I was used to. It took me a while to make better use of light and framing and take advantage of the technology. The kit lens (18-55mm) is nice and light (making it useful on the fly) but my new macro lens (100mm) just takes better pictures. It has limitations (as we have been discussing, depth of field is an issue) but the image "sings" afterwards, to my eyes. I am a big fan of the image stabilization on both of these lenses. It's kind of necessary for me given my hands are not so stable.

From the public garden this afternoon (last pic with a tripod):

I will preface this post by saying that I claim no expert knowledge whatsoever. However, I know some people who for their jobs deal with high end macro photography. The equipment they have runs in the many thousands to 10s of thousands of dollars range so nothing I would ever consider buying. One of the most recent conversations I had with one of them was regarding photography through a microscope and the person told me that unless I was going to spend thousands of dollars to get a nice professional setup, I might as well just get a phone adapter for one of the oculars and use a high end iPhone to get publication quality pictures without spending all those thousands of dollars and that the lower end cameras are just not any better than the newest camera systems on the latest phones. Now obviously using a microscope there is a serious objective lens doing some of the work, but his point was that the camera phones have become very good. The problem with them is that to get the really good pictures you still need to provide them with a stable vibration free platform, but those are available - so my sense would be to give that a go Steve.

F stop is all about depth of field vs. light getting to the sensor. The lower the f number the bigger the aperture so the more light gets to the sensor so you can take pictures in lower light conditions without dealing with flash, different ISO settings etc. However those low f settings have a very shallow depth of field, so unless you are photographing something that is pretty much a flat surface a lot of the image is going to be out of focus.
Higher f-stop settings create a larger depth of field - so much more of the object is in focus even if it has significant 3D aspects, but the light getting through the sensor is much reduced so limiting where you can take these kind of pictures.

With regards to DSLR I have low end (but not quite all the way at the low end) Nikon, it came with a decent set of kit lenses, but like Baja my experience was similar. It took OK pictures, but if you were asking it to do something that might be pushing the boundaries a little (or just got near it), it would just not get great pictures. I got a 90 mm (?? - I think I have not looked at since our move and I might have the number wrong) Nikkor macrolens and things changed dramatically in terms of how I perceived the quality of the images I was taking without too much extra effort.

@ketsui73
You do not need RAW format for macro. None of my above pictures are taken in RAW.
I would not put any money into a lens for a cell phone.
I would think your Canon would be able to take some nice macro shots. Looks like it has the macro mode and can set aperture priority.
I have a point and shoot Nikon W300 that I can get to take very nice Macro shots from it.

I agree with Steve (elgecko), Steve (ketsui73), no need to do RAW pictures - however in my Nikon I do then need to turn off some image post processing that it does in addition to saving it as say a jpg, for a while I had it save both a RAW and a jpg version and aside from file size reduction which generally leads to some loss of resolution it also messed with the brightness and color, which is not what I wanted.

I thought the iPhone 11 already had some kind of macro(-like) function on the camera? Even my iPhone 8 takes pretty good pictures and generally gets the focus on the right subject even when zoomed in on a small subject, but that is really where I think the DSLRs still beat most other cameras - accuracy and ease of focus both manual and auto - a lot of the point and shoots even some of the fanciers ones some times have focusing issues in my experience, but it could just be me (though the fact that I can get it right with the DSLR suggests it is not all me).