P#2 Q#4b: Macro Photography Tips (Continued)

Combining multiple exposures to create stunning macro photography images

Audri Lanford: Do you want to give a couple more tips for how to use depth of field to make your macro flower photographs really good?

Tony Sweet: OK, well basically you want everything in the flower sharp but you want the background soft.

If you want, for example, the stamen of a hibiscus, it is almost un-photographable because it is so long and the flower is so far behind it. It's almost impossible to get just the stamen all sharp. But you can do it software called Helicon Focus.

You can download a trial version of Helicon Focus. What this software enables you to do, and it's tremendous for flowers, is that you can shoot wide open or at a very wide open aperture: F28, F4, something like that where there's no depth of field. So, the background is blurred.

But you take, for example, a hibiscus -- you would photograph the very tip and then focus in just a fraction and take another shot, and then focus in a fraction past that, and take another shot, and then a fraction past that... etc., etc., until you get to where you want the sharpness to end. Are you with me so far?

Audri Lanford: I am. This is fascinating.

Tony Sweet: That could be 8, 10, or 20 pictures. It could be any number you want it to be. The software will merge them.

At the point that you're finished. The petals will all be very, very soft red and a part of the stamen will be razor-sharp; that is just unobtainable without this software. Because if you stop down to get that without the software, the petals come in focus way too much.

So you can limit your sharpness with your F-stop, but if you shoot a number of exposures, just focusing into the stamen in very small incremental exposures, the software will put that together.

You select the multiple exposures you want to use and put them in a folder. The software says, "Where are they?" You select the folder and load them into the software, and then the software joins them all together. And you see it happen as it's happening, exposure 1, exposure 2, it just puts them all together one at a time.

Audri Lanford: Wow.

Tony Sweet: It picks the sharp part of each exposure and blends them. It's sort of like HDR -which is High Dynamic Range.

Audri Lanford: I was just thinking that. This sounds exactly like HDR for sharpness.

Tony Sweet: That's exactly what it is, HDR for depth of field. That's right.

Audri Lanford: Right, for depth of field. Oh, that sounds fascinating.

Tony Sweet: It's tremendous, and it's the flower photographer's best friend, because it gives you this whole new way to express what you want to show without being limited by the inherent limitations of the hardware and the physics. Because without this software, you often can't do what you want. But this software allows you to transcend that.

In summary, to get the best results with macro photography where you can't naturally get the effect you want, take multiple shots and combine them using a software program like Helicon Focus.