Sharpness problems

[TMG1961]

Hi everyone, I just got started with macro photography. Using a sony a6400 with laowa 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and a meike speedlight mk320. The biggest problem i have is getting sharp photos. I use focus peaking so that i can see what is in focus. I use aperture between f/8 and f/11. I added a photo, aperture was f/11 and the entire little plant was covered by the focus peaking colour. But to me the photo is not completely sharp. Am i doing something wrong?

 

[MinitecaPhotographie]

I've used the Laowa 100mm for a year before changing my D7200 for an Olympus MFT OM-D e-m10 mark iii. I use all the time flash with diffuser. The MK320 that I use actually on my Olympus, can't be used for focus stacking with handheld camera because the recycling time is too long. I've been using a speedlight cobra flash on my D7200 because the recycling time was only 2s that allows me, with external batteries, to shoot handheld in burst mode at 7 images per seconds. Enough to do focus stacking. Which speed did you choose in your settings? Most of the time lack of sharpness is due to motion blur. I recommend 1/200 or 1/250s with flash in TTL mode.

 

[MikeB]

Hi everyone, I just got started with macro photography. Using a sony a6400 with laowa 100mm f/2.8 macro lens and a meike speedlight mk320. The biggest problem i have is getting sharp photos. I use focus peaking so that i can see what is in focus. I use aperture between f/8 and f/11. I added a photo, aperture was f/11 and the entire little plant was covered by the focus peaking colour. But to me the photo is not completely sharp. Am i doing something wrong?

First of all, focus-peaking is great but it does not cause miracles to happen. I have no idea how big these flowers are and how far they were from the lens but with the details you gave (Sony A6400, 100mm Laowa at F11) I plugged those into a DOF calculator and got only about 0.27cm of DOF. That is a tiny sliver. If you shot handheld, merely breathing deeply would have moved your subject out of the optimum DOF.

Solutions may include shooting from a tripod, decreasing the aperture even further (at the risk of introducing further unsharpness due to diffraction or focus stacking (not in-camera) by taking a few shots with tiny movements of the focus ring in between and combining those on the computer.

 

[Jack]

The sony a6400 doesn't have in body photo stacking. Has to be done manual. For now i focus on getting the basics covered and be able to get sharp focused photos.

You don’t need to have built in focus stacking option with in camera body, there isn’t one in canon body either, but people still achieving photo stacking By taking multiple pictures of same subject focused on different areas, and after you can stack the images on Photoshop or other programs which does stacking images.

 

[MikeB]

The Laowa is an awesome lens for Canon and Pentax shooters as they are the only mount versions of this lens which have aperture coupling. Laowa itself states on the site: "Only Canon EF version is equipped with a CPU chip and motor for aperture control via the camera. All other mounts are manual and aperture is controlled by the aperture ring on the lens". The Pentax version was only released last year and it too has the Pentax KA mount with the "A" position on the aperture ring of the lens.

As most cameras choose a fixed X-synchronization speed (either 1/125 or 1/160) any TTL flash must have information about the aperture in order to calculate the appropriate full-power output following a TTL pre-flash. Once that is lacking, the flash can only be used in a manual way and the automatic head-zooming will be disabled.

 

[MikeB]

Still not sure about the lens, done some handheld and tripod shots. The quality of the photos is terrible. This is the best tripod shot. Used focus peaking and the entire insect was showing up red. f/22 - iso100 - 1/160 sec with flash

The lens is fine, you need to come to terms with some totally natural optical limitations but first I have to ask: why is your focus peaking showing up in red? Did you set it that way? Mine shows up as crisp white outlines which never cover the whole subject at macro distances which I find easier to use. Although I use Pentax I understand from the Sony manual that white focus-peaking is the standard setting on your camera too.

Try focusing while using focus magnification (MENU → View attachment 15493 (Camera- instellingen1) → [Scherpst. vergroten]) and you should be able to see the focus-peaking moving across your subject like a highlighted band. There is no way to get an insect such as this in sharp focus front-to-back at macro distances with any lens at any F-stop.

When you focus, take into account that the DOF extends about 1/3 in front of the area you want sharp and 2/3 behind the point of focus.

DOF at the f22 you say you used would only be around 3.5mm. I don't know much about insects but this seems so be some form of tiger beetle which is about 12mm long. Judging by the image, that more or less is the same as its legspan between the closest foreleg and the furthest. That is 3-4 times more than the DOF at this aperture.

What also plays is that at f22, even the in-focus parts of your subject start losing sharpness due the the impact of diffraction. Although this test of the Laowa is on a Canon FF body, you can still see sharpness drop off dramatically beyond f8-f11. By the time you are at f22, sharpness is less that with the lens wide open at f2.8!!

Sorry man but I cannot make any other conclusions that you'd have the same issue with other lenses. Just try taking ca. 4-6 different exposures moving the point of focus a tiny bit every time, then load your shots into whatever software you use on the PC to merge the images to one completely sharp image.

 

[subbu]

The only way to get tack sharp pics in macro is - put camera on tripod, zoom in live view, fine tune the focus, using shutter release cable take the photo. I know that this process is not possible all the time but no other shortcuts...

 

[piotr]

.....Guess i have to accept that for the next long time i will get more rubbish then good photos, and hope that things become better by time.

Don't worry to much, 8 out of 10 of my photos are blurry. The problem is very shallow DoF while shooting macro (and shaking hands ofc). I mean VERY shallow. It's always couple of millimeters. So practically is impossible to get (for example) whole bug sharp from the top of the head to the end including legs, wings, antennas etc. The only solution is focus stacking and it's really not so hard to learn. But it's time consuming. Start shooting bugs and try to focusing on eyes, aperture priority mode, auto ISO. Change aperture and look at the results. And now the most brutal truth : practice, practice, practice. Take 100's of photos and then.... practice more.

 

[kzurro]

sorry, I'm late to the thread.

- disable focus peaking or set "Peaking Level" to the lowest setting available (Low I think). Focus peaking may be useful for video or a less "focus-nailed" demanding photography genre like landscape, but for macro photography it's mostly useless.

- use focus magnification to help you nail the focus. as neither the lens, nor the body, has stabilization, it is going to be hard, but it gives the best results. (EDIT: well, a tripod would give the best results, but chasing insects with the camera set on a tripod is a pain in the neck).
as the lens is fully manual, focus magnification won't kick in when you turn the focus ring. you can assign it to any custom button or even other buttons and use it whenever you want.

- I suggest sticking to f/8 or f/11 to get the sharpest images (I prefer f/8), you can go wider to get more background separation, being aware that depth of field is going to be shallower. if you use smaller apertures, any benefit on depth of field is going to be weakened by diffraction softening. sometimes, when I want more depth of field, instead of using a smaller aperture, I just step back a bit and crop later in post. depth of field is highly dependant on the distance to the subject, so if you increase the distance to the subject by stepping a bit back, you also increase the depth of field.

- to get the best results, full manual control of everything is the best practice, at least for macro and specially if you are going to use a flash. I suggest to set the camera to Manual mode and use the flash also in manual mode. from what I've read in your comments, you don't have any alternative with the latter. your lens is already fully manual, so one less thing to worry about.
set your ISO to 100, the shutter speed to 1/160 (if the flash is HSS capable, you could use a higher shutter speed, but the flash itself is the one that's going to freeze any movement) and the desired aperture.

- to focus manually, a good practice is to set the focus distance or magnification first, then place the square for the focus magnification where you want the focus to be, zoom in (twice if needed as your camera has two different magnification settings), move slowly back and forth, as if you where rocking, until you nail the focus and shoot. it may seem difficult at first, but actually it's easy getting used to do it that way.

 

[kzurro]

At the moment it is still a big mystery to me how to set up the flash and in what direction to flash. I keep getting mixed results with the same settings. Too bright, too dark, not sharp, focus in the wrong spot. Going to be a very long time to get the hang of it.

that might be due to the effective aperture.
the effective aperture depends on the magnification. the formula is: effective aperture=f-number*(magnification+1).
some examples to clarify this:

you are shooting at f/8 and the magnification is 1:2 (x0.5). 8x(0.5+1)=12, the effective aperture is f/12.
now f/8 and you get closer to the subject, shooting at 1:1 (x1). 8*(1+1)=16, the effective aperture is f/16, you have lost almost 1 full stop of light compared to the previous example.
now f/8 and shooting even closer, at 2:1 (x2) the maximum magnification of the Laowa 100mm. 8*(2+1)=24, the effective aperture is now f/24, you have lost more than 1 full stop of light.

that could be a reason for you getting mixed results, unless you were getting those mixed results even working at the same distance. if you get different exposures using the same ISO, shutter speed, aperture and distance to subject, then the options are: something is faulty or there are changes in the ambient light, the one you may not be paying attention to because you are using a flash and forgot about it.

the effective aperture also affects at which point you begin to see diffraction softness. there's a rule of thumb that suggests not to work with an effective aperture bigger (in f-number) than f/20 if you want to get maximum sharpness. the first to examples aren't diffraction limited, as the effective apertures (f/12 and f/16) are smaller than f/20. the third example would be diffraction limited, as it is bigger (f/24) than f/20, and softness would begin to be visible.