MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Is this a ridiculous concept? My wife wants to take close up photos with a wide angle, to get the background the way she wants it. I have a macro lens but it's 35mm and 2x crop so the field of view is not wide enough.
I'm thinking of maybe extension tubes on the wider end of the kit lens or my wide angle. Is this doomed to fail?
This kind of thing?
[url= http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2362/2742590140_656957e178.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuartie_c/2742590140/ ]India 060[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/stuartie_c/ ]stuartie_c[/url], on Flickr
24mm (equiv.) on a Ricoh compact.
Do you really need macro? You probably just need a lens with the angle of view you want that focuses close. True Macro is 1:1 but you knew that already right 😕
If it doesn't focus stick an extension tube on.
Pansonic LX5 can be set to macro even at a 24mm equiv, guess the crop factor is something silly despite the F2 aperture.
My 18mm Olympus OM Zuiko focuses down to about 20 cm, but as MrSmith says, that's hardly 'true' macro, just close-up.
I thought most wide angle lenses focused pretty close. Your issue will be getting a small enough aperture for a good enough depth of field to make having the background worthwhile. Though I guess with the small 4/3 sensor you should find it easier than APS-C or FF.
How exactly do you want the background to render? If you want it sharp front to back without being diffraction limited then you could focus stack using helicon focus or photoshop.
You probably just need a lens with the angle of view you want that focuses close. True Macro is 1:1
Yes you are right - close focusing wide angle. I don't understand why people get hung up on 1:1 as much as they do, tbh.
There's a set of tubes on Amazon for £7 that provide different sizes, which I might try out, but they're not intelligent and provide no power to the lens. Oly make one that does but it's 25mm and I think it's too long to be used at the wide end.
She wants to photograph her scarves whilst they are still on the loom, so quite close up in the foreground but with a wider angle.. like so
[img] 
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That was done with the compact, with its internal flash. We just thought we could do a bit better with the real camera and flash and whatnot.
I'll just order the tubes and see what happens.
Multiple shots and stitch them (MS ICE will do it). Although you'd probably need to shoot from above.
^^ nice ^^
Multiple shots and stitch them
don't you mean 'focus stack' them? i can't see how stitching is going to help when it's not a flat overhead shot he's after?
I would think that for any stitch setup you would need some type of rail system for the tripod otherwise you are going to get a fair bit of distortion aren’t you?
Anything remotely wide result in a lot of distortion as well? Like those big nose pictures you see when people use a UWA for ‘hilarious’ portraits.
My thoughts, based on the picture shown (but assuming you would want a wider field of view) would be to use as long a lens as practical and just move backwards to get the framing you want. Less distortion, increase depth of field (if that's what you want), nothing to buy. You are going to lose some of the detail that you would get with a macro type image (unless you stitch obviously), but that has to be the case, you can take a picture of a fly that fills the frame and see the hairs on its back but you can’t get that level of detail taking a landscape.
Where are the images ending up? on the web at 800px wide or on a 48" print?
Well it's rectangular, so the scarf would just diminish into the background a bit, which is what we want really.
Hmm.. just tried the wide-angle lens:
[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8528/8580578800_f3fdc8a7db_z.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/11569254@N06/8580578800/ ]P3222135[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/11569254@N06/ ]molgrips[/url], on Flickr
[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8383/8580579182_91054a6ccf_z.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/11569254@N06/8580579182/ ]P3222134[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/11569254@N06/ ]molgrips[/url], on Flickr
[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8095/8579480531_1b855ec45f_z.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/11569254@N06/8579480531/ ]P3222133[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/11569254@N06/ ]molgrips[/url], on Flickr
That might be good enough as it is, actually. Without the wonky angle of course. Although it's not that close up, I guess it could be cropped in to suit.
ignore the stitching advice with a longer lens above. shoot on a tripod and focus stack in increments and let photoshop do the rest. you can step focus with a canon tehered to a computer (and fire the shutter without touching the camera) is there an app that does that for your olympus?it makes the job a lot easier.
failing that just stop right down as diffraction isn't going to trouble you at the viewing size if it's just for the web.
Focus stacking doesn't make an image wider, it increases DOF.
Irrelevant now he has a WA of course.
The Oly software lets you control the camera, dunno if it allows focusing though, will try it out. Neat if it does though 🙂 I know it does time lapse, which is something I've been meaning to try out at some point.
She doesn't like 'faff' though.. I do.. but she doesn't. So I'll lend her the wide angle and see how she gets on with it.
Focus stacking doesn't make an image wider, it increases DOF.Irrelevant now he has a WA of course.
fully aware of that but if Mole is going to get really close the depth of field is going to be minimal even if stopped down on a WA lens.
If I get the tubes.. good point.. hmm.
TBH I'm not entirely sure what's in her head, so who knows. She also liked the telephoto shots I took with the 150mm..!
Mol, the middle one of those three shots looks perfectly fine, I can't see much point in doing anything really complicated for little gain; the law of diminishing returns seems appropriate here. 😀
Yeah like I say I don't really know what she's got in her head and why what we've already done isn't appropriate 🙂 That scarf is a very narrow one so it's always going to be difficult to get it to fill the frame and also diminish into the background.