Why Your Macro Photography Isn't Working

[@Rob.1340]

Cheers Scott, good info as always. All the best. 👍📷😎

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Many thanks Rob👌👍

[@KGsPhotography]

Great video Scott. Can be a really tough subject but the rewards can be quite amazing.. when I’ve been stacking, I tend to use the focus stacking within the Canon camera which seems to work quite well. Cheers Keith

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks Keith, I'm not sure what Sony has available in there systems to do the same. Something I need to take a look at! Thanks for watching mate👌👍

[@glennhunt3595]

Use Affinity software myself Scott, would be very interested if you put out a more in depth video especially about editing macro subjects, as usual a very interesting vid. See you had a decent day weather wise hope to put some macro work up on the Facebook site when it warms up. 👍

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks Glenn, there will be more videos through the summer, firstly because I struggled so much with this! I suspect i know the reasons so will hopefully be able to show some improvement and pass on what I did to crack it!!👌👍

[@Jaszczur123]

I also use Affinity Photo for macrophotography and I love it! Much cheaper and better than Lightroom+Photoshop+HeliconFocus combo. I would love to see more in depth video about Affinity.

[@adrianalfordphotography]

Great video Scott and you got some beautiful shots. Good tips as always mate, Cheers for sharing.

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks Adrian, not to the standard I wanted but as always there is plenty of room to learn! One of the joys of photography mate! thanks for watching👌👍

[@davidbailey1689]

Excellent Scott. I have a similar setup to yours and was frustrated to find that with the camera/lens angled downwards that I was getting creepage occurring and thus ending up with larger distances between shots than I could handle. Thus I am learning how to use the kit by concentrating on static subjects until such time as I am confident with the whole process. Really informative video, this one. Thank you.

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks for watching David. Interesting with regard to the creeping issue. This could well be the case with this slider, I did try to tighten this up as much as possible so the weight of camera and lens didn't cause this but I'm not sure it worked. I did have a manfrotto geared head at one point and will probably end up getting another one as this would eliminate that issue in conjunction with slight refocusing of the lens. Hopefully there will an improvement by the next stacking video and I will have reasons why!👌👍

[@paulstickley4819]

An interesting video Scott. I have been doing outdoor insect photography for many years and I have ended up with a technique of staying far enough back to get a decent depth of field and then cropping in post. Having said that, I see many great images taken by others that use stacking. Many of those images are taken using cameras with a built in focus bracketing feature. I am more than happy with the results I get with no stacking for my active insect shots but I have just tried stacking for the first time in the last couple of weeks. The stacking I did was indoors using an automated focusing method and the camera mounted on a stable mount and the subject was stationary. One thing I have learnt in my short period of stacking experience is that Zerene give far better results than Photoshop (far fewer artifacts). I am hoping warmer weather arrives soon and I can get out shooting my favourite subjects on a daily basis (mainly pollinators in action).

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks Paul, I think results are relatively easy with the first setup using a slider and with plants and fungi etc. It's something I will be looking to improve as more targets appear. From what i can see online the Olympus system seems to be a favourite with its inbuilt bracketing specifically for macro photography. I did give Helicon focus a try while I was making this video and that seemed to perform better than affinity so it may be that stand alone software performs better in general.👍👌

[@Spybee007]

Great information! Question, do you set your focus peaking setting on high, medium or low? Thanks!

[@scotttilleyphotography]

Thanks for watching. To be honest mine is set to medium as I haven't needed to take it higher. 👍👌

[@Spybee007]

@@scotttilleyphotography Thanks for the reply! I'll give it a go. I'm using high, but I've noticed I've been having a hard time getting insect's eyes in focus. I'm using a shutter speed of 1/200 or more, auto ISO and f8-f11. Who knows maybe my hand are too shaky or I just need more practice.