Good point Hyram. Will have to check that aspect too. You are right, it gives an unnatural feel to it. There was something bugging me but couldn't put a finger on it. Now you mention it I realise I was just too immersed in just getting the subject sharpened.

Thought I should play around a bit more today with macros.
I could do with a bit more of light though, pretty gloomy and I think more natural light would have helped.

Comments are welcome, on any aspects of the image. Your advice comments and suggestions are really helping me out improve on this.

What a coincidence. You are literally at a walking distance from where I am. So many times I take the Ridgeway road when I go running and go round Imperial way or George V avenue for a long steady run back towards Pinner .

And I use that road constantly driving when I go towards Sudbury Hill or Wembley.

Mannesty

Thanks a lot for your words. That is truly encouraging hearing from people as experienced as you and the lot here that I can achieve some improvement

I have got my eye on a hot chocolate cuppa that Pizza Express friends of mine make for me and I tried taking some macro shots just fooling around, and I found the very same problem. Couldn't focus on the areas that I wanted overall, but with this method I think I can pull one off .

I guess its time for a hot chocolate now , its just around the corner so off I go. They are always keen on seeing me using them as guinea pigs for my trials, including staff , so watch this space

Thanks a lot again for your words

Lack of light seems to have part a huge part on parts of this one.

I did go for it though, opened wide the aperture on the 100mm macro just to see where it would get me.

James Oops Prieni I mean (aha, almost got you there huh? I bet you thought I was falling for that one again),

Not moving the camera is supposed to be imperative. You just refocus it aiming at different planes. So this really comes handy if you have one of those subjects that you just dont know where to focus minutely, as you focus one area and the other one goes out of the window. All I do is just change the focus plane (is this the correct term?)

Another bunch coming up, but this one just needed 3 shots as the flower was most of it on the same plane

Probably I didn't need the last two shots for the stacking, but hey, I am still new to this so wanted to make sure I wasn't leaving anything out of focus on that plane

These are the original ones taken, and then the last one after the stacking again,

















and the result

this is the image


Please disregard the dark spots as I wasn't giving attention to it. Didn't want to use the flash, and I get light only coming from the side window. The purpose of the exercise was just for the stacking.

Six shots was all that it took. From what I read I can stack even 30 shots. So my next one I found just the right flower that it spreads across a few more plans so focusing on the conventional way just makes it extremely difficult. I would have to just pick and choose the areas and snap it if I wanted to take an image in the conventional way and not stack it. As I changed the focus plan the other ones were totally out of focus, so you can see the last result. I will throw in the server the original images too, so you can view the original images.