Flowers in focus

[Norm12]

I am just curious as to if there are any tips, tricks or ideas as to when you are shooting flowers to get everything in focus. I am using a Canon 4ti with a 55-250 lens and most times zoomed in to 200-250. If there is another flower or flowers next to or a little behind or above to the flower I want in the picture, they will be out of focus at an aperture of 5.6 or 8. If they are side by side then most time I try to get all my focus points to light up before snapping the pic but this does not always work. Thanks!

 

[paigew]

You can get a "depth of field" calculator for your phone. It will tell you what aperture your camera needs to be at for the depth of focus you want. Right now, your depth of focus (DOF) is too narrow to get all the flowers in focus. Also if all your focus points are all lighting up then the camera is selecting the point on which to focus. Even though all the points are "lighting" only one point actually focuses...and the camera is picking that point. You can set your camera so that YOU select the focus point. and you should do that ASAP

 

[Norm12]

Thanks, I'll give that a whirl as to the camera. Sorry no phone to download to; am old fashioned and just use an old flip phone

 

[paigew]

well you can calculate DOF on your own too Or online. I have actually never used a dof calculator. I just shoot a lot and learned through trial + error
try this link: DOF CALCULATOR

 

[Norm12]

Me too and being retired I have lots of time to experiment. Thanks!

 

[Designer]

I am just curious as to if there are any tips, tricks or ideas as to when you are shooting flowers to get everything in focus. I am using a Canon 4ti with a 55-250 lens and most times zoomed in to 200-250. If there is another flower or flowers next to or a little behind or above to the flower I want in the picture, they will be out of focus at an aperture of 5.6 or 8. If they are side by side then most time I try to get all my focus points to light up before snapping the pic but this does not always work. Thanks!

Knowing that there are several factors that affect DOF, addressing one or all of them will help improve it.

Your long lens is working against you for DOF. Use a wider lens.
The aperture you chose is not helping. Use a smaller aperture.
The distance to your subject is probably something that you can't do much about, but if you own the flowers, you can always "arrange" them. If you don't want OOF flowers in the background, bend them out of the frame. Select the ones you want and group them together using some twisty-ties. Personally, I don't mind seeing some OOF flowers in the frame, particularly if they are the same flowers as the main subject.

 

[Norm12]

What if I kept on the same lens, zoom out to 100mm or less, move closer to my subject and set the Aperture to 12 or F16 maybe?

 

[deeky]

That's one way to do it. But think of your focal length as determining your angle of view - the shorter the focal length, the wider the angle of view which may not be what you want for close-ups of flowers.

Not having a macro lens (yet), I use a similar lens for a pseudo macro set up. I shoot at right around 300mm focal length (for the narrow angle of view), from about 5 feet away (minimum focal distance), and then adjust my aperture to get the depth of field I want. F/16 gives me just under an inch of dof, which is usually about where I like it. But that is a pretty small amount of light at that focal length, so you may then need to bump up your iso to accommodate.

Here is an example. 300mm, f/16, iso 200. Flower is crisp while the leaves in the background quickly begin to fade out.

IMG_6821a by breckmiller, on Flickr

 

[Norm12]

I will definitely give that a try! I thought that bumping up my Aperture over F8 or F11 at 250 would make it dull, flat or loss of detail but your picture disproves that. I will give your suggestion a try tomorrow. I actually didn't wait for the other responder to answer and went out and got some great shots with more flowers in focus when I shot between 95 and 135mm at F8 but then I wasn't as close as I would have liked. Might try what you suggested when shooting a singular and apply that when trying to get more than one flower in the shot and have it be in focus at 250mm. Thanks again!

 

[TCampbell]

Usually I want the other flowers and background deliberately out of focus... like these:

Cottage Gardens by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

VO3A3109 by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

Tulips by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

The deliberate blur helps draw your attention to the one that is NOT blurred.

If you want more of the scene to be in-focus, use a higher f-stop value... e.g. f/16 or f/22 (but know that as you close down the aperture, the shutter speed needs to remain open longer to collect more light (you may need a tripod and if the wind is blowing the flowers around that may not work) -or- you may have to increase the ISO sensitivity which may result in more "noise" in the image.

 

[Norm12]

Tim, your pictures show what I wanted to do as to sometimes getting other flowers in close proximity to each other while zoomed in. It was and is frustrating to have, for example, 2 flowers in close proximity to each other with maybe one being just above and behind the other, your zoomed in on both and want both in focus and then to take the picture and find out one is in focus and the other is not.

Just curious as to whether switching from Evaluative to Partial or Spot metering would help or make a difference in this situation?

 

[TCampbell]

"Evaluative", "Partial", and "Spot" are all metering modes... they don't affect focus.

The ability to get two flower both in-focus vs. one in focus and the other out of focus the result of the "depth of field" that the image had. The "field" is the range of distances that objects can be from the lens and still be more-or-less in acceptable focus. A large "depth of field" (DoF) means that much of the content in the image will be in focus (subjects near or far) whereas a shallow DoF would not allow much else to be in sharp focus besides the object(s) at the lens' focus distance.

DoF is controlled by three factors:

1) The focal length of the lens. The shots I posted above were all shot somewhere between 100mm and 120mm focal lengths. Longer focal length lenses naturally create shallower depth-of-field. Wide angle lenses (short focal lengths) naturally create a large depth-of-field.

2) The focal ratio (aka "f-stop") being used by the lens. The first two images above were shot at f/4 (I use this a lot) and the third was taken at f/5.6. A tiny aperture opening (high f-stop number) provides for a larger depth of field. A larger aperture opening (low f-stop number) creates a shallow depth of field.

3) The focus distance. As the camera focuses to distances that are farther away, the depth-of-field naturally becomes larger. You get shallower depth-of-field if the focus distance is set closer to the camera (in "macro" / close-up photographer, the depth-of-field came become so extremely thin that it's challenging to get all of your intended subject in-focus and photographers sometimes have to resort to "focus stacking" ... shooting multiple images, each focused to a slightly different distance, and then merge them to create a single image with reasonable focus.)

If you put all of these factors together... e.g. if you shoot with a very long lens, and use a very low focal ratio, but set the focused distance at or near the minimum focus distance the lens will allow... you get a VERY narrow depth-of-field.

There are charts and applications that can help with this. See: Hyperfocal Distance and Depth of Field Calculator - DOFMaster

As you shoot more, you'll begin to get a feel for how much depth of field you can expect from typical focal length / ratio / distance combinations that you tend to use frequently. This is why although I own mostly lenses that provide f/2.8 or better... I tend to do most of my shoot at f/4... or higher. I do use the lower focal ratios ... but I'm careful when choosing lower focal ratios because I know I may hit a point where I can't get everything in focus that I want in focus if the f-stop is too low.

 

[Norm12]

Tim, thanks!!

 

[Lumac]

You can also make the "focus stacking" technique.
You need to take several pictures with different focus distances and merge everything under photoshop.
Some people use this technique in macro photography in increase the deep of field.

here is the link on wiki: Focus stacking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Norm12]

Thanks, Lumac.