How to do amazing Macro photos!

Hello Dear reader!!

As promised, this week I will be talking of studio photography and I will show you how to do the focus stacking for amazing results and super sharp and detailed macro images.

The final image is on the top of this publication, and I will take you on step by step so you can do this type of photography, it was taken with ISO 100, f /5.6 @0.4 sec.

First, what gear did I used?

Canon 6D Camera

Canon Macro lens 100mm

Manfrotto Tripod

2 pocket wizard

What lighting?

3 hensel strobes

1 hensel boom

White Reflectors

The first step is set up the object that you are photographing and the lights, starting with your key light , and add one light at a time.

The first light here was the one located to the left the camera, and then added the one from the right side of the flowers and a white reflector to bounce back some light in the the left side, later I added the one on top with the boom, as there were some areas of the flower that were looking dark and finally the one on the back with the additional reflector on the right of the object.

Keep in mind that the light has to be build and adjusted little by little according to the effect you want. Once the lighting was set, then to take the photographs you have to set the camera to manual focus, and we will be taking several photos, adjusting the focus to different areas of the object.

 I suggest to start focusing on the areas that are closer to the camera and adjust the focus little by little on each image, so that at the end you have photos of every single area of your subject in focus.

Example of four images I took with focus in different areas of the subject.

Then finally and before starting to take photos I activated the mirror lock up function in the camera, so that the mirror stays to avoid the micro-vibrations of the camera that may interfere with the sharpness of the photograph.

And I used the camera 2 second timer instead of pressing the shutter (or you can also use a remote control) to avoid any unnecessary vibration of the camera .

In this example you can see 4 of the most representative images with different areas in focus, but I actually used 10 for the focus stack in photoshop, to maximize the effect.

Now, here are the Photoshop steps to align and blend your images:

1) Go to menu bar: File, Scripts, Load Files in to stack.

2) Then you will see the load layers window that was opened, go to browse and select the desired images, click open, and ok.

3) In the photoshop document you will see all the images on separate layers, select them all.

4) Go to menu bar: Edit, Auto-align, Auto, Ok.

5) You may now crop the edges you got white (with no content).

6) Select all the layers, go to menu bar: edit, Auto-blend layers, stack images, Ok.

You will see now that photoshop created detailed masks on each layer and that your image on the screen is all sharp.

Finally for the last touch and to have a perfect image, you will see in certain areas that Photoshop created some artifacts, is just that are areas that the mask was not done perfectly, so you will have to go to each layer to identify which one has the problem and correct that area of the mask manually.

I hope this information helps you, please let me know if you have any questions, and stay tuned, for next week I will be giving some more tips of photographs in the studio, but of  people!

See you soon!

Greta Sanchez.