Focus and Shadow

There is an old rule of thumb in macro photography.  For taking advantage of your available depth of field, place the plane of best focus 1/3 of the way between the closest point on the object and the furthest.  On that first image, it looks like you focused on the closest point.

Having said that, the depth of field seems sparse for an f/80.  Did you mean f/8.0?  I find f/8 not really high enough- I generally shoot around f/22 to f/32.

Looks like I am mis-reading the settings as they appear on the screen.  It is set at 1/80 but there is another setting that appears when I depress the "take the picture" button (for lack of knowing what it's actually called) - F4.0

So way less than what you suggest. 

I have played around a bit this afternoon with some test shots.  The screen displays 6" F22, then 8", 10", 13", 15", 20", 25", and 30", all at F25.  I am way out of my depth here as to understanding what these settings really mean, but am not averse to taking a bunch of pictures at different settings to see how things turn out.

Sounds like you have the camera set on aperture priority ..."AV" and ISO on some fixed number.  What you're seeing are the shutter speed numbers 8 = 1/8 of a second ... 30 = 1/30th of a second and so on.  In AV mode ... the camera selects the shutter speed for correct exposure.  If ISO setting was on AUTO, I doubt you would see such slow shutter speeds unless the 800 you mention is the max ISO for your camera ... 1/60 is about as slow as you want to go for reliable hand held shooting.

Judging from your sample images, what you're describing as your technique as well as the quetions you're asking, I think you would do well to watch my videos ... in the thread right below this one ... I'm trying to keep them simple enough that most anyone would maybe pick something up.

Paul

Thanks for the information Paul.  I will take a look at your videos when I get a chance later today.

Closeups. I remember hand making a parallax frame for my first camera with a coat hanger. Focus and DOF are always going to be an issue, worsening the closer you get. As you stop down past a certain limit you begin adding new diffraction issues.

This may seem counter to what you are trying to do but you may want to give it a shot. The higher the resolution you have at your disposal the better it may work. Move your camera/tripod BACK a few feet. You will get more DOF at that same aperature than you would a foot away. Now crop it.

There is an equation for figuring the f/# where the blur circle for out of focus equals diameter of diffraction blur.  However, take this with a grain of salt.  The shape of the two blur circles (spot profile) is different.  Diffraction blur lowers contrast somewhat over large areas of frame, whereas the defocus blur circle looks more like- out of focus. The result is that you can use a higher f/# than indicated by that equation.  Look at some of Ansel Adam's landscapes.  He always used very high f/#s.

If you are using a digital camera it doesn't cost anything to experiment.  Try some high f/#s- you may be surprised at how high an f/# you can go to before being bit by diffraction.