Post processing

Right from the outset, 12 years ago, post processing became an integral part of my photographic experience. I haven't counted, but I expect I have spent much more time processing images than I have spent capturing them.

I enjoy post processing, learning how to do it better, experimenting with different techniques and products, discussing it with others. I can't imagine simply using images straight out of the camera. 

I am convinced that post processing can make a big difference to the look of images and can usually (for my images, and my visual preferences) improve them compared to what comes out of the camera.

I hope that my post processing has improved over time. One of the things I did while preparing these posts was to reprocess some images with my current processing products and workflow to see how they compare to how I processed them four to five years ago in 2014. Two were captured with a Panasonic FZ200 small sensor bridge camera, two with a micro four thirds Panasonic G3 and two with an APS-C Canon 70D. All six are small aperture shots with image quality dominated by the softening effects of diffraction (the first five used apertures equivalent to around f/45 on full frame, the last one an aperture equivalent to around f/26 on full frame). I believe diffraction-softened images like this are particularly susceptible to improvement in perceieved sharpness/detail from effective post processing.

Click on an image to see a larger version

Comparison 1: Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 2, Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/640 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 3: Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 4, Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 5, Canon 70D, f/32, 1/250 sec, ISO 800, flash

Comparison 6, Canon 70D, f/16, 1/80 sec, ISO 1600, available light
(I made a mistake in processing this one and included the extra sharpening in Silkypix that I normally use only for invertebrates. The fine crystalline structure of the petals is therefore probably a little overdone.)

I know, because people have told me, that my post processing looks to be complicated and time-consuming. That is not how I see it. I deal with large numbers of images and over the years I have deveoped a workflow that lets me deal with these large sets of images quite quickly and with much less effort than might appear from a description of the process. This involves using several pieces of software, using each for what it is particularly good at, and using batch processing to get images into a state where they are easy to handle before I start making any adjustments to individual images.

I currently use between two and six software products while processing a set of images. Depending on the circumstances this may include some or all of the following:

• Fast Picture Viewer, for an initial, very rapid trawl of the images to get rid of the obviously unusable ones. Fast Picture Viewer uses the small JPEG images embedded in raw files rather the raw files themselves as used by Fast Raw Viewer, but for my purposes the embedded JPEGs are good enough and Fast Picture Viewer has a macro facility which I use to file the selected (actually, the non-rejected) images by ISO, which makes DXO processing much easier.
• Either DXO PhotoLab (for stills) or Helicon Focus (for stacks) for the first stage of the processing, using PhotoLab for noise reduction of noisy small sensor raw files and using Helicon Focus for botanical subject stacking and associated retouching to cure or at least hide stacking problems.
• Sometimes, Silkypix to add extra sharpening/revealing of fine detail for invertebrates and/or rescuing colours from very bright areas, especially for flowers.
• Always, Lightroom, to apply image-specific adjustments such as cropping, adjusting tonality or localised sharpening or noise reduction, and select the images I want to keep.
• Very occasionally, Photoshop to do some additional processing that I can't do in Lightroom, for example complicated cloning.
• Quite often, XNView to review the processed images as output by Lightroom and see if I still want to keep them or not, or see if they need some additional processing.
• Always, Faststone Image Viewer to deal with the bureaucracy of renaming images, deciding what order to display them in and make backup copies locally and on line.

I use batch processing when using PhotoLab and/or Silkypix. In the case of PhotoLab the presets I use are specific to a camera and ISO. The PhotoLab batch processing can be very time-consuming, but it only takes a very small amount of time to set it up and the rest of the time I can leave it to cook and do other things.

Sensor size and image quality

This is yet another topic that generates intense debate. All I'm going to do here is to say what conclusions I have come to from a practical perspective for my types of subject matter and my working methods.

I like having a camera which is small enough to put into a pocket but which can cover a very large range of focal lengths from wide to telephoto. For the range I want it seems inevitable to me that the camera must use a very small sensor and one must simply put up with the consequences for image quality. I don't think this is at all controversial.

For invertebrates, where I used minimum aperture almost all the time, I don't think it matters what the sensor size is because the effects of diffraction limit image quality to a similar level for all sensor sizes. I have a lot of experience and examples with sensors of 1/2.3", micro four thirds and APS-C size. I have not had a chance to test this yet with my full frame camera. I will be very surprised if that is any different from the others in this respect, but as always I would prefer to be evidence-based on this rather than just leaving it as a supposition and so I intend to run some tests in due course.

For flowers and other botanical subjects I have produced images that I like using cameras with small sensors, but I tend to prefer the look of botanical images captured with sensors of micro four thirds size or larger. For single capture images I have not developed any preference as between micro four thirds and APS-C, having used both quite a lot for botanical subjects. In two exercises where I compared images of the same subject captured with a micro four thirds camera and a full frame camera, here, and here, I could not discern any image quality benefit of using full frame. For stacked images I can only use my Panasonic cameras and I have a strong preference for the micro four thirds G9 over the G80 and the small sensor FZ330.

I am part way through comparing micro four thirds and full frame for sunsets and cloudscapes. Early indications are that full frame may produce noticeably better image quality for sunsets, both for high dynamic range scenes where the sun is still above the horizon and for low light scenes after the sun has set. That is for single shots. For exposure bracketed shots combined using exposure fusion ("HDR") there may be little difference for scenes with high dynamic range when the sun is still above the horizon. However, more thorough testing may change these early impressions.

RAW or JPEG?

This is another question that is the subject of periodic, and sometimes ill-tempered, debates, especially at dpreview.com. My own view is that which is best depends on the context. (And sometimes it may be better to use both and decide afterwards which to use, although as it happens that is not an approach I have ever used much.) 

I started out using JPEG because at first I didn't know about raw. Then I knew about it but my cameras did not. Then my cameras knew about it but I didn't know how to deal with raw files. Then I knew about how to deal with raw files (at least in outline) but wasn't convinced it was worth the extra effort. Eventually I came to the conclusion that there were advantages to using raw and as I used raw more I came to realise that it didn't involve any more effort than using JPEG, and in some cases actually less effort.

It remained like that for some time, until I started using stacking. For focus bracketing with the Panasonic G80 I quickly switched from using raw to using JPEG because with raw the buffer would fill up and then the capture rate would become extremely slow. But I didn't use focus bracketing much because I found that I preferred using post focus to capture videos from which to extract JPEG images to stack. So now I use video-derived JPEGs most of the time for botanical images, and raw for everything else.

I took an active part in a very long (and in this case good-natured) series of threads at dpreview about JPEG and raw, discussions that I found very informative. (This post at dpreview contains links to the 12 threads concerned.)

Aperture and exposure bracketing

I have occasionally used exposure bracketing, sometimes for sunset scenes with the sun in the shot or, on only a handful of occasions, for botanical shots with a flower against the sky. Mostly though for contre-jour botanical shots I expose for the highlights and do deep shadow lifting. On reflection, it might be better if I used exposure bracketing more often for both these types of shots.

On the other hand I have used aperture bracketing a lot, always for botanical scenes. For me, one of the issues with botanical shots, especially flowers, is trying to get a pleasing balance between the amount of the subject that is in focus and the look of the background, both of which change as the aperture changes. Before capturing a shot I can't tell how that balance is going to work out for a particular aperture. Often, with micro four thirds or APS-C, it may be around f/8 to f/13, but from time to time it can go as far as f/4 or f/16, and occasionally right out to f/22 or, very, very rarely f/2.8. Trying different apertures and reviewing them on the LCD slows down the flow of a session, giving it a very different feel, dulling my creativity. And in any case it can be ineffective because it is difficult to judge accurately from what appears on the LCD, especially in bright sunlight, and even more so if the capture has been underexposed to protect highlights.

Starting with the G80 and now with the G9 I can use aperture bracketing; with one press of the shutter button I can have exposures all the way from f/2.8 to f/22, and I can then take my time choosing which to use when viewing them in subdued light on my PC, if necessary after some initial processing to lift the shadows. I have found this to be very effective for my purposes, in terms getting results that I like the look of and also in terms of keeping capture sessions moving at a good pace.

There is a downside to aperture bracketing that needs to be weighed against the advantages. The ISO is constant during an aperture bracket sequence. That means that the shutter speed doubles in length for each stop reduction in aperture. I therefore need to use an ISO that will give a tolerable shutter speed at the smallest aperture that I am likely to want to use. Quite often that means using ISO 800 or sometimes ISO 1600, and even then the f/16 and f/22 exposures may sometimes be too slow to avoid motion blur. That means that if I use one of the shots with a more typical aperture then the ISO will be higher than I would have set it if I had been shooting a single shot with that aperture. So, using aperture bracketing, ISO is suboptimal a lot of the time, which can make the processing more complicated than it would have been for a lower ISO single shot, and my degrade the perceived image quality in some cases.

On balance I thought the advantages of aperture bracketing outweighed the disadvantages, and so I used it a lot with the G80 for botanical subjects, at first mixing it with single shots and then eventually using it most of the time without using single shots.

This changed when I got the G9 and soon started using focus stacking most of the time for botanical subjects.

I have never tried aperture bracketing for invertebrates because getting the maximum DoF coverage of the subject is my primary concern for invertebrates. 

Single shots/stacks

I have recently been using stacking most of the time rather than single shots for botanical subjects. I had a slow start from late 2016 when I first tried stacking using post focus with a Panasonic FZ330. This was limited to experimental use of stacking, as was my first year or so with a Panasonic G80. 

The reason my use of stacking was so limited was that I encountered sufficient problems with doing the stacking that it put me off. The main problem was halos, but there were also issues with ghost images and backgrounds being very noisy and/or posterised and looking very ugly. Dealing with images with those problems could be very time-consuming, more so than seemed worthwhile. It was only during 2018 that I slowly came to a better understanding of the causes of the problems and how to deal with them, and when to give up because the problem was too difficult to be worth trying to solve.

With the FZ330 I was limited to using post focus to derive JPEGs for stacking, and this used 4K video from which I could extract 8 megapixel JPEGs. The G80 also did post focus, with 8 megapixel 4K video, but it also did focus bracketing. This allowed the use of full size images, raw as well as JPEG. It therefore seemed the better bet in terms of image quality. 

Focus bracketing could indeed produce very good results, but there were downsides. I like to work hand-held, and I could do this when using post focus, which captures frames at a rate of 30 frames per second. This meant that the time needed to capture the images was typically from between two and six seconds, which worked fine hand-held. Focus bracketing worked over six times slower, at around 4.5 captures per second. That made capture times uncomfortably long for hand-holding. Also, managing large numbers of individual images, especially large numbers of raw files, proved significantly more onerous than managing a single video file per capture. 

I was also not convinced that using raw rather than JPEG or using focus bracketing rather than post focus produced better image quality. That seemed to be determined largely by how well the stacking worked and what measures I had to take to cure the problems.

It was when I got the G9 in late 2018 that my use of stacking really took off. The G9 can use 6K post focus and this produces 18 megapixel images, which is actually more pixels than full size G80 images. Also it lets you use a very flat camera profile, Cinelike D, and I found that using this coupled with minimising JPEG noise reduction and sharpening led to stacked images from Helicon Focus with tonality that I liked and which responded well and easily to post processing, although much to my surprise, they turned out to need very little adjustment a lot of the time.

And what about the halos, ghost images and nasty backgrounds? They seem to be less of a problem now. Partly this may be because Helicon Focus has had an upgrade and can deal with some of the issues better.  And partly it may be a matter of having more experience with the stacking software and coming to a better understanding of how to use it effectively, and how to use other software such as Lightroom and occasionally Photoshop better to deal with problems that Helicon Focus can't. And perhaps I am a bit more relaxed about the imperfections. I have come to realise the obvious reality that single shot botanical images have their own issues and that on balance even with their imperfections I often prefer stacked images to single shot images of the same subjects with their different imperfections.

I think my main problem with botanical stacking at the moment may be that I am using it too much, hardly using single shots at all. Looking back through a large number of botanical images in preparing these blog entries I realise that there are many that I like just as much as I like some of the recent stacked images, and so I would probably do best to use both single and stacked imaging for botanical subjects. The G9 makes it quick and easy to switch between exposure bracketing and post focus.

As for invertebrates, I know that it is possible to produce wonderful stacked images of the sort of subject matter and magnifications I deal with using kit that I have - G80 or G9 with and without Raynox lenses and/or extension tubes. I am hugely impressed with what this photographer does with stacked images of invertebrates using this kit, and using it hand-held I think. However, in my limited experiments so far with a couple of dead insects I have found around the house my results have not been good. I will try with live subjects when the invertebrates reappear, but it may be this is a tecnique that is not going to work for me. One thing that has become clear in discussing techniques and results with other close-up/macro photographers over the years is that what works for one person may not work for another, even amongst equally competent photographers. 

Auto/manual focus

I think the consensus view is that autofocus is not much use for close-up/macro. My experience is different, and I use autofocus almost all the time. It does however depend on the kit and the magnification. 

For my relatively low magnification botanical imaging I find autofocus fine with close-up lenses, not quite as good but very usable with the Olympus 60mm macro and not quite as good again but usable with my Sigma 105 macro on APS-C and full frame. This is for single image capture. The situation is different for post focus and focus bracketing, both of which use autofocus. The 60mm macro works fine with post focus and focus bracketing (neither post focus nor focus bracketing is available on my APS-C and full frame cameras).

For invertebrates I find autofocus with close-up lenses fine down to 10mm scene width or so. It works less well as the magnification increases beyond that but it can still be usable for quite small scenes. I have used autofocus (hand-held) with a scene around 3mm wide (as can be seen from 13:35 to 14:00 in this video at You Tube where I was using a 32 diopter Raynox MSN-505 on a 45-175 lens on a Panasonic G5, which at maximum zoom covers a scene width of around 3mm). That was exceptional though. I have only ever worked with scene sizes that small on an occasional experimental basis.

My experience of autofocus with macro lenses has not been positive for the scene widths I normally work with for invertebrates. I found that the focusing hunted so much that trying to use autofocus was unproductive.

And of course higher magnification macro lenses do not support autofocus anyway.

Why such small apertures?

For invertebrates I use very small apertures. In fact I use minimum apertures. Most people won't use apertures that small because diffraction causes loss of sharpness and detail. However, there is a trade-off. If you use larger apertures you can get better fine detail, but in a thinner front to back slice of stuff that is in focus. With very small apertures you lose that fine detail, but you get more larger scale detail across a larger front to back slice. For my taste, and it seems for quite a lot of people who see my invertebrate photos, that works well. As for the lost detail, if you are looking at a single image rather than comparing two taken with different apertures you may not even realise there is detail missing. Also, some (or sometimes even all perhaps) of the fine detail that is missing may be too small to see anyway, depending on the size of the displayed image, how close you get to it, and whether you can zoom in to see greater detail.

The following illustration is not very pretty, but it is difficult to arrange this sort of comparison with a live subject. The illustration flips every three seconds between f/5.6 and f/22. The f/5.6 version should be sharper/more detailed because f/5.6 is somewhere around the sharpest "sweet spot" aperture for that lens, whilst diffraction has a big impact at f/22. However, when I pixel peeped at 1:1, concentrating on the small areas that were in best focus in the f/5.6 version, I wasn't sure they were sharper or more detailed than the same areas in the f/22 version. This may be because the centre of focus shifted slightly between shots and confused the issue. Also, the processing may have had a stronger effect on the less sharp f/22 version. In any case, my eye is not upset by a loss of fine detail in the f/22 version. On the other hand the difference in how much is in focus seems large to me, and I very much prefer the f/22 version with it having so much more in focus, and that is why I use such small apertures for invertebrates.

The situation is different for botanical subjects and for common birds in flight.

What aperture I use for botanical subjects depends on whether I am using stacking or not. If I am using post focus to capture videos for stacking then I use f/2.8, which is maximum aperture on the 60mm macro. This is not the best aperture for sharpness; that is around f/4 to f/5.6 depending on whether you are more concerned with centre or edge sharpness according to the resolution chart here at ephotozine.com.  However, I often work hand-held, sometimes getting close to, or hitting, the 1/30 sec lower limit for post focus, and using f/2.8 keeps the shutter speed faster than it would be with a sharper aperture. I find f/2.8 sharp enough for my purposes and as with the loss of sharpness/detail from diffraction, what I am losing would quite likely not be visible at my output sizes anyway.

Of course, the light level is often high enough to be able to get a fast enough shutter speed with a smaller aperture, so I could use the sharper f/4 to f/5.6. However, there is quite a lot to think about for each capture and leaving the aperture at f/2.8 simplifies things a little and I am content to leave it there as one less thing to have to deal with. This is suboptimal in terms of potential image quality, but practical out in the field, and after a certain point with image quality, for me, practicality becomes the most important factor.

And there is another factor too. Using f/2.8 maximises the out of focus rendition of the background. That is good for separating the stacked subject from the unstacked background, but bad in that it is more likely to produce ugly, too fast transitions between in focus and out of focus areas. Also, as desribed below for aperture bracketing, maximising the out of focus rendition of the background may not be optimal (to my eye) for the overall visual appeal of an image. However, these considerations are too difficult (for me) to judge before I see a stack developed on my PC, and I am content enough with what I get from f/2.8 to take what I get from this unoptimised approach of always using f/2.8.

The trouble, for me at least, with optimising each capture in every respect is that it requires a slow, careful, measured, thorough, deliberative approach which can soak up a lot of valuable time out in the field, decreasing the number of subjects/scenes tackled during a session. For me this is a significant consideration in what are often target rich environments. 

Also, full spectrum optimisation can increase the opportunity for error. For example, when using post focus for stacking (which involves using JPEGs with "baked in" white balance) I think I get best results by setting the white balance individually for each scene from a grey card. The trouble is that I risk using the wrong white balance, possibly badly wrong, if I move from say a shady scene to a sunny one and forget to reset the white balance (I am working to develop a strong habit of always setting the white balance for each scene as the first step). This approach involves taking the time to do what are redundant white balance settings when I move from one scene to the next with similar illumination, but the white balance is important enough to me to take that hit (which is not serious as I have set up the G9 so setting the white balance from a grey card is quick to do) and to take the risk of sometimes using a badly wrong white balance.

If I am not stacking a botanical scene then the choice of aperture is solely down to the overall visual appeal of the image, especially the balance between the amount of the subject that is in focus (smaller apertures often better) and the way the background in rendered (larger apertures often better). For single images I can optimise the shutter speed and ISO for a particular apertue. However, I generally use aperture bracketing as this is much faster in execution, but this means taking whatever I get in terms of noise. This is because the ISO has to be chosen so as to give the smallest aperture shot a fast enough exposure, and this means that the ISO is almost always higher than would be the case for an individually optimised exposure.

On looking back through some captures that used aperture bracketing it turns out that I rarely use the wide open f/2.8 captures. This is mainly because, usually, not enough of the subject is in focus at f/2.8. Also, I don't always use the capture that (to my eye) just has enough of the subject in focus and which throws the background out of focus more and isolates the subject more than a smaller aperture would. I sometimes prefer versions where the background is less out of focus.

For common birds in flight I use a particular aperture (f/13 on the Canon 70D) and also a particular ISO (ISO 800) as these settings give me a good combination of depth of field and fast shutter speeds on the bright days I do this type of photography.

Close-up and/or macro lenses, tubes etc

With my fixed lens cameras there are only two ways of capturing close-ups: use the camera's close-up mode if it has one, or use close-up lenses. With my interchangeable lens cameras there is no close-up mode so the two options for the sort of magnifications I use are close-up lenses on (typically zoom) camera lenses or macro lenses, extension tubes, teleconverters, bellows or reversed lenses, any of which can be combined with close-up lenses. I have tried all these except bellows.

My fixed lens cameras' close-up modes only work at the wide angle end of the zoom range. They let you focus very close indeed to the subject, perhaps only 1 cm away, or even in one case touching the subject. Such very short working distances are problematic for what I want to do, especially for invertebrates. I also want to use more magnification than these close-up modes can provide. Close-up lenses are therefore the only practical option for my purposes on my fixed lens cameras. 

I have used close-up lenses quite a lot with interchangeable lens cameras. I put the close-up lenses on telezoom cameras lenses, using low power close-up lenses for botanical subjects (or for larger subjects no close-up lens), and using the more powerful close-up lenses for invertebrates. 

I now have a range of close-up lenses of varying power which provide as much magnification as I want to use, and a bit more.

On my bridge cameras and Panasonic G series cameras I find autofocus works well with close-up lenses down to scene widths of 10mm and smaller, with no hunting. I found autofocus usable with close-up lenses on a 55-250 lens on the APS-C Canon 70D, but not as fast or reliable as with the other cameras. Also, I use single area auto focusing and, unlike with the other cameras, the smallest focus box on the 70D is too large to allow precise focus placement.

Autofocusing is not quite as fast or reliable with the Olympus 60mm macro, but entirely usable. Autofocusing on the full frame macro lenses I have tried on full frame and APS-C (Canon 100L macro and Sigma 105 macro) was less satisfactory than with the Olympus 60mm macro, with more and sometimes lengthy focus hunting, and sometimes not finding focus at all. The more powerful macro lenses I have tried (Canon MPE-65 1X to 5X and Meike 85mm up to 1.5X) do not have autofocus.

I have tried various combinations of macro lenses, extension tubes, teleconverters and reversed lenses on interchangeable lens cameras. The only one of these that has worked well has been the Olympus 60mm macro on my G series Panasonics, used for botanical subjects. It provides the range of magnifications I need with no need to make any adjustments such as adding and removing extension tubes or close-up lenses to get the magnification I need for particular subjects. The 60mm macro is very small and very light, which makes it excellent for using hand-held, including for long sessions and for using one-handed if necessary to get at awkwardly placed subjects. It is sharp, like most macro lenses. Autofocus works well enough for my purposes.

In contrast the macro lenses I have tried with my larger sensor cameras, the APS-C Canon 70D and the full frame Sony A7ii, are big and too heavy (for me) to be comfortable for extended use; my right wrist starts to ache well within the first hour. 

For use in the field close-up lenses have the advantage of not needing to open up the camera and risk dust on the sensor in order to get to a different range of magnifications. I consider this to be a big advantage as I have had a lot of problems with dust on sensors. So much so in fact that as soon as I got the Panasonic G9 I removed the dust from the sensor (which was there straight out of the sealed box), put the Olymput 60mm macro on it and have left it there, effectively turning the G9 into a single lens camera. 

After much experimentation I am currently fairly settled in my use of kit for my main subjects, invertebrates and botanical subjects, using close-up lenses almost all the time for invertebrates and using a macro lens almost all the time for botanical subjects.

There are a few more details about this in this earlier post.

There is a great deal more about how I worked my way through these options over the course of several years in this series of posts at Talkphotography.co.uk.

Flash

As with tripods I have experimented with a number of flash setups. Here are a few of them.

As well as experimenting with the size, shape and positioning of diffusers and reflectors, I tried a number of different layering materials, shapes and combinations inside diffusers. Here are a few of them.

The setup which proved most successful, and which I currently use, is based on a Venus Optics KX800 twin flash. As with the other setups, I tried various approaches to diffusion. Here are a few of them, with which I tried various internal diffusion layers.

This is the current setup, shown on an FZ330 with Raynox 150 when being used to photograph wasps flying in and out of their nest.

Here are some of the photos from that session.

150.06 - 150.09

I generally don't use flash for botanical subjects because I prefer the look of natural light. Only very occasionally do I raise the flash and use low power flash (undiffused) for fill light when shooting into the light. I am more likely to use exposure bracketing than flash fill, but my use of exposure bracketing is very occasional. I could probably do well to use a bit more fill flash and exposure bracketing.

These days I use flash most of the time for invertebrates, exceptions being larger insects such as butterlies, dragonflies and damselflies which I tend to see in bright sunny conditions and use available light. (That said, I have not seen a dragonfly or a damselfly for some time, and hardly any butterflies either.)

The bendy arms on the KX800 allow for great flexibility, including using one flash head to illuminate the background to avoid black areas. However, I have settled into leaving the heads in a position where the illumination works for the magnifications that I use most of the time. When I want to raise dark backgrounds  I slow down the shutter speed, if necessary raising the ISO (although I don't like raising the ISO much with the FZ330, which is my main tool for invertebrates, as it has a rather noisy sensor).

The KX800 is a manual flash. I was doubtful as to how that would work out, having previously used TTL flashes, but it turned out to be better because it proved quick and easy to find and set a suitable flash level, and having found and set it I got more consistent results than with my TTL flashes.

The KX800 also has the advantage of working with all my cameras that have a hot shoe, unlike my TTL flashes which are limited to particular camera brands.

I am probably too much in the habit of using flash as the dominant light source for invertebrates at the moment and might benefit from using a more balanced combination of flash and natural light.

Tripod, monopod, steadying sticks

I have an on/off relationship with my tripods, mainly off at the moment. Over the years I have tried a number of tripod setups. Here are several examples.

I have also tried a monopod and some home made "steadying sticks".

Almost none of these setups got used beyond the experimental stage. The one setup that has worked well has been a Benro carbon fibre tripod with a reversible central column to which is attached a Velbon extending arm.

Before that I used a similar setup with a much heavier metal construction and adjustments that were similar in flexibility to the Benro/Velbon setup but more difficult and slower to adjust.

It is true that using a tripod has benefits for my most common subject matter - flowers etc and medium sized invertebrates. If using available light a tripod lets me use slower shutter speeds than I can hand-held, and hence sometimes lower ISO, with less noise and more detail. And for some subjects, such as early morning invertebrates where very long exposures are needed a tripod is essential. Also, whether using available light or flash, using a tripod helps frame the shot more precisely, especially as magnification increases, and makes it possible to retain the framing for repeated shots of the same subject, avoiding the strain of maintaining the same position for extended periods. Holding the camera steady with a tripod can also make it easier for autofocus to engage and for the area focused on not to have moved too far between focus engaging and the shot being captured.

However, with the techniques I am currently using shutter speed is not much of a problem. I am using post focus most of the time for botanical subjects. Shutter speed with post focus cannot be slower than 1/30 second, and this turns out to be fast enough with the G9 and 60mm macro to get sharp hand-held images of stationary subjects most of the time at the relatively low magnifications I typically use. It seems that erratic subject motion in the often breezy conditions here is more of an issue than blur from hand-shake, and using a tripod does not help with subject motion, especially when different parts of a plant move in different directions and/or by different amounts, which is very problematic for stacking. The stacking software does not seem to have a problem dealing with the coherent movement of the subject/scene (all of the scene moving in the same way) caused by hand-shake; as long as the individual images are sharp it doesn't seem to matter if they wander around from frame to frame, including moving around by fairly large amounts.

I am comfortable using up to ISO 800 with the G9, or ISO 1600 if I have to, but almost all the time recently I have found that I can use ISO 400 or lower, generally using shutter speeds faster than the 1/30 second minimum, often considerably faster. 

For medium sized invertebrates I typically use flash as the dominant light source. This means that the effective shutter speed is the length of the flash pulse, which is somewhere in the region of 1/2500 sec with the flash I am using at the power I am using it. This means that image blur from hand-shake is not an issue at the scene sizes I photograph, usually no smaller than around 9mm wide.

As to precise framing and retaining framing over an extended period, I have found that if this becomes problematic I can relax the framing, leaving a larger "dead space" outside the prospective final image perimeter to allow the framing to wander around but still get sufficient image quality for my purposes despite using a larger crop.

It also turns out that for these sorts of subjects, magnifications and techniques focusing issues are not problematic.

Therefore, for much of what I photograph the practical benefits of using a tripod are limited, and these need to be weighed against the disadvantages. 

Setting up the tripod takes time and, especially with invertebrates, can lead to missed shots. (This can occasionally be an issue with plants when particularly propitious illumination can disappear quite fast.) Using a tripod also makes it more difficult/slower to explore alternative angles on and distances from the subject. I do a lot of this with botanical subjects, and sometimes with invertebrates too. 

Sometimes it is simply not possible to use a tripod. I have an extremely flexible tripod, but even so I sometimes need to get angles on subjects (invertebrates and plants) that I cannot reach when using the tripod. With my current setup dismounting and remounting the tripod from the four way focus rail is fiddly and tedious.

I find that photo sessions are less fluid and more laboured when using a tripod, and less enjoyable. 

Given this balance of benefits and disbenefits, I tend not to use a tripod for these most common of my subject areas.

I don't often photograph smaller scenes, but when I do framing and focusing issues are more evident. I tend to use a tripod for these, although as with most of my tripod use, current and previous, I keep my hands on the camera rather than using remote shutter release. I find this makes it easier to get and retain the precise framing that I want. The problem I find with hands-off operation is that when I take my hands off the camera the rig settles into a different position, altering the framing. When photographing small scenes this can make it very difficult to get the required framing because I have to use trial and error to get the rig to settle into the position I want it in to take the photo.

For common birds in flight I don't think using a tripod would be at all helpful. I use fast shutter speeds so hand shake is not a problem, and I need speedy, instant to instant, flexbility of positioning. 

For cloudscapes and sunsets I don't see a tripod being particularly beneficial while the sun is still above the horizon because shutter speeds are fast enough to avoid hand shake and when using relatively wide angles  changes in alignment from shot to shot don't appear to be an issue when shooting exposure brackets. However, for panoramas and when light levels fall when the sun drops behind the horizon a tripod would be beneficial. (I say "would be" because I have not done much of this type of photography for some time.)

Overall then my attitude to using a tripod is that I'll use one when the balance of benefits favours doing so, but for most of what I am doing at the moment that does not seem to be the case.

Are these close-ups or macros?

This is a subject that, like equivalence, can produce repeated, lengthy and sometimes acrimonious arguments. A lot of the time it revolves around the "true/correct/proper" definition of "macro". The most often used definition is that a capture is a macro if the size of the image of the subject on the camera sensor is the same size or larger than the size of the subject itself. This is known as being "at least 1:1".

In comparison, "1:2" means that the image on the sensor is 1/2 the size of the subject, while "2:1" means that the image on the sensor is twice the size of the subject.

To my way of thinking this definition has the merit of being unambiguous, well-defined, precise and fairly easy to understand. Also, to my way of thnking, it has the disadvantage in certain (rather common) circumstances of being not terribly useful and/or being very misleading. This has to do with sensor sizes.

Let's just consider 1:1 for the moment. A capture is or is not 1:1 irrespective of the sensor size. If the same subject is captured 1:1 on a large sensor and on a small sensor then you will see more of the subject on the larger sensor, but if you look at an area on the larger sensor the size of the smaller sensor you will see exactly what the smaller sensor would capture for that area.

This is sometimes known as "1:1 is 1:1" or similar, often coupled with something like "It is either macro or it isn't. Sensor size doesn't alter that."

Using the 1:1 definition of macro, I wouldn't disagree with any of that. 

However, the 1:1 definition also means that the image on the top left below is a macro and the one on the top right isn't, and that the two images below them are not macros either (none of these is cropped btw).

The reason for this is that the image at the top left was captured with a 60mm macro lens operating at 1:1 on a Panasonic G80, which has a sensor around 18mm wide. Since it was operating at 1:1 the scene was around 18mm wide. The image at the top right was captured with an FZ330 bridge camaera with a Raynox 250 close-up lens. The FZ330 has a sensor around 6mm wide. Since the scene was 18mm wide, the image on the FZ330 sensor  was only 1/3 the size of the scene, and so this was not a macro as the magnification was only 1:3. The other two, closer-in, shots were also captured with the FZ330 and Raynox 250, and neither of those two scenes is as small as 6mm wide (the smallest one, at the bottom right, was around 9mm wide. An image captured with the FZ330 would only be 1:1 if the scene was 6mm wide or less, so neither of these was a macro.

When different sensor sizes are involved (and I use four different sensor sizes) I think talking in terms of images being 1:1 macros or not is not very helpful, and tends to confuse the issue. I therefore prefer to talk in terms of scene widths and the kit needed to be able to photograph those scene widths rather than whether the required magnification is 1:1, 2:1, 1:2 or whatever. 

I also don't see much benefit in talking of images being macro or not based on the 1:1 definition. In my own mind I use much looser definitions of macro and close-up. I rather liked one of the descriptions I read on one of the forums, along the lines of "If it fits on the tip of your finger it is a macro. If it fits in the palm of your hand it is a close-up." If people want a size to think about I sometimes suggest that if the scene is less than an inch or so across it is a macro, otherwise it is a close-up. For my own photos I tend to think of my invertebrate photos as macros and my botanical images as close-ups. Sometimes I just refer to my photos as close-ups and leave it at that.

I don't think there is much benefit in arguing about what macro "really" means. 

Why don't you identify the subjects?

I would very much prefer to be able to identify my subjects and relate interesting facts about their lifecycles, habits etc. Unfortunately I have had a life long problem of memory retention and recall. I can't remember the names of things, or information about them - types of cheese, football teams, film stars, pretty much anything. With only a handful of exceptions, for invertebrates I can only remember a few high level terms like "fly", "wasp", "bee" (and I can get those three confused), "spider" or "beetle". I occasionally use one of my books to identify an invertebrate, but a few minutes later it has gone from my mind. For flowers I have for 12 years depended on my wife to (repeatedly) tell me the names of particular plants that I have photographed when I need to know the name for a post I am doing. 

I suppose this is one reason why I think of my photography in terms of trying to create "pretty pictures", because that doesn't involve having to know anything about the subject matter - it is (for me) just to do with light, colours, shapes, lines, textures etc.

What are those long filenames?

If you look at any of my images at Flickr, or on some sites such as TalkPhotography.co.uk, you may see long filenames such as 

1385 16 2018_09_27 P1550950_DxO SP7 LR7 1400h 

or 

1401 12 P1000535 G9+60 PF6K 81f ISO ISO 400 F2.8 1-160 A8,4+innerB8,4 LR7 1400h

The first part of the name lets me find the original of the image if I want to rework it. The rest of the name tells me something about how I produced the image.

I gather my images into sets, each of which has an identifying number, for example 1385 and 1401 in this case. I have a spreadsheet which lists these numbers and gives the title for each set. 

Almost all of these sets are uploaded as albums to my Flickr account. The second number is the sequence number of the image within the set.

The information in the rest of the name can include information such as:

• The filename of the original (which may be a raw file, JPEG image or video)
• What applications I used to process the file. In the first example, DXO Optics Pro/PhotoLab, Silkypix and Lightroom
• The size the processed file was outputted, 1400 pixels high in these two examples
• For stacks, some additional information (Exif data gets lost during stack processing). In the second example this includes the gear (Panasonic G9 with Olympus 60mm macro lens), the fact it was captured using 6K video of which 81 frames were stacked, the ISO, aperture and shutter speed, and what stacking method(s) I used and the parameters for those methods, in this case a combination of Helicon Focus methods A and B.

I have changed the information I put in filenames over the years and so they are not consistent and I can't give a definitive list of abbreviations. For some of the earlier ones I can't even remember what one or two of the abbreviations refer to.

I could of course use a digital asset management system (DAM) to keep some or all of this information, which would make it easier to find things. I could for example use Lightroom for this. However, I change the software I use from time to time and over the years I have learnt not to store my data in proprietary formats that I may be unable easily to transfer to a different software product. As a result I use just the basic folder and file naming facilities offered by Windows.

Why so many cameras?

Over the course of 12 years I have accumulated a large number of cameras, buying them (some new, some second hand) at a rate of a bit more than one per year on average. (It was much faster than that in the last six years as in the first six years I only bought a camera once every two years.) And I have kept almost all of them, getting rid of just three that ceased working. I currently have a dozen. Surely that is excessive?

On the forums I often see comments like "Buying new kit won't make you a better photographer", and "It's the photographer not the camera" and "You can make great photos with any camera". There is truth in all these and similar comments. However, I think there is another side to this. In my experience I tend to get better results with one particular camera or camera/lens for a particular type of subject matter. I currently think in terms of the following seven types of subject, for which different kit works best: Larger invertebrates such as butterflies and dragonflies; very small invertebrates such as springtails and barkflies; medium sized invertebrates; botanical subjects; common birds in flight; cloudscapes and sunsets; subjects that turn up when I'm out and about and not particularly "doing" photography.

At the moment I have four different favoured setups for four of those seven subject areas: medium sized invertebrates, botanical subjects, common birds and flight and "out and about". The favoured setups are, respectively, a small sensor bridge camera with close-up lenses and diffused twin flash, a micro four thirds camera with a macro lens, an APS-C camera with an APS-C telezoom lens, and a small sensor travel camera.

The reasons for these four choices are as follows. 

1. For medium sized invertebrates I almost always use minimum aperture and because the effects of diffraction dominate image quality it doesn't matter which setup I use in terms of image quality. The choice of kit therefore comes down to usability. The Pansonic FZ330 bridge camera and G3/5/80/9 used with close-up lenses focus faster with more reliable and precise accuracy than using the LCD screen on the Canon 70D using a macro lens or close-up lenses. This favours the Panasonics. On the Panasonics, close-up lenses have better (longer) working distances than the macro lenses I have, which favours close-up lenses (as it doesn't make any difference to image quality, because of the effects of diffraction). When using the FZ330 with a Raynox 150 close-up lens I get a range of magnifications with which I can do almost all of my invertebrate photography without changing the close-up lens. In contrast, with the G3/5/80/9 I have to keep changing between the Raynox 150 and Raynox 250. This favours the FZ330, which is currently my favoured camera, with a Raynox 150, for medium sized invertebrates.

2. For botanical subjects I am now most of the time using post focus to capture videos from which to extract JPEGs for stacking. The FZ330, G80 and G9 can do this. The FZ330 and G80 are limited to 4K post focus, which produces 8 megapixel JPEGs. With the G9 I can use 6K video, with 18 megapixel JPEGs. I can also use the very flat profile Cinelike D Photo Style, which makes it easy to produce tonality that I very much like in my botanical images. The G9 can do post focus with a macro lens or with a close-up lens on a telezoom camera lens. A macro lens captures very fine detail and opens up to f/2.8, which is good for shutter speeds when working hand-held, which I do much of the time. A macro lens can also focus out to infinity. Close-up lenses have a more limited range over which they can focus and this can be too limited for some scenes. Macro lenses can have issues of focusing speed and accuracy when used for single shots, but because of the way post focus drives the lens, focus accuracy and speed are not an issue when using a macro lens for post focus. Unlike with invertebrates, the shorter working distances of (my) macro lenses is not an issue for botanical subjects. Taking all this into account, my favoured kit for botanical post focus video capture is a G9 with an Olympus 60mm macro.

3. I photograph common birds in flight (mainly gulls) at a local little boating lake. I do this in good light when I can get a good combination of high shutter speed and a small enough aperture to get (my preferred) sufficient depth of field. For this subject matter I use a viewfinder rather than LCD. My Canon 70D is the only one of my cameras that lets me see very clearly what is going on. Even though electronic viewfinders have improved over the years, I still find a marked difference between all of mine (up to and including my Sony A7ii full frame camera) and the optical viewfinder on the 70D. I use a 55-250mm telezoom lens on the 70D which is quite light and so can be used for long periods with no strain, and it is very quick to zoom from wide angle (which I used to locate subjects) in to what I need for shots, and very responsive when changing the zoom, which I need to do quickly for birds that are close by with rapidly changing distances from me. The phase detect focusing on the 70D is very good at focusing on birds that are flying in front of busy backgrounds, which happens a lot at the boating lake. The Panasonics are not so good at this. For these reasons my favoured kit for common birds in flight is the 70D with 55-250 lens.

4. When I am out and about I am much more likely to keep a physically small camera with me, one that will go into a pocket, rather than a larger one. I have found that small sensor travel cameras with very large zoom ranges can, especially when shooting raw, produce images of sufficient quality for my purposes. The SX240 did not shoot raw. The TZ60 does, and the only reason I got the TZ90 was when the TZ60 started to malfunction. The TZ90 is my favoured "carry around" camera.

For a fifth area, cloudscapes and sunsets, I have yet to do thorough comparison tests between different setups but I may well end up using a fifth camera type, full frame (Sony A7ii), by itself or with a second camera to cover longer focal lengths, which might be of any of the other types. There are a lot of combinations to consider.

For the other two areas, larger invertebrates and very small invertebrates, I have, respectively, three and two setups which seem to do the job equally well. For large invertebrates these are the FZ330, G5/80/9 with 45-175 or 70D with 55-250, all three with and without a mild Canon 500D close-up lens. For very small invertebrates my best two options are the FZ330 or G5/80/9, with either a very powerful Raynox MSN-202 close-up lens or two Raynox 250s stacked together or a Raynox 250 and a Raynox 150 stacked.  The G series cameras have the advantage that the 45-175 does not change length when zooming, which makes very powerful close-up lenses much easier to use. The FZ330 has the advantage that it provides a larger range of magnification with any particular close-up lens setup, and because of its long, 600mm equivalent maximum focal length it can sometimes be used with larger working distances than my other cameras (because it can sometimes use a less powerful close-up lens with a longer working distance to cover a particular scene size).

The choice of kit for particular purposes is therefore highly dependent on the specific characteristics both of the subject matter and of particular combinations of kit. It is much more complicated than something simple like "you get better results with a larger sensor", or "specialist macro lenses produce better results than general puspose lenses". It is all very context dependent, and has resulted in my using a variety of kit for particular purposes.

So have my camera acquisitions been excessive? With one exception, it doesn't feel that way to me. Two were direct replacements for cameras that I was using but had stopped working. Three were "historical", relatively old and very inexpensive second hand cameras bought just to see what they were like to use. For the rest I think I can make a good case for needing them to explore some new facility which looked as if it might help me produce photos that I liked better for particular subject areas. 

There was one exception. In 2018 I thought I had worked out what my setups would be longer term, and one of those was a Panasonic G80, which would have had two roles, with different lenses. Because of the great trouble I have had with dust on sensors, and because my favoured kit setups were now settled for the longer term, I bought a second G80 so I could avoid changing lenses. That turned out to be a mistake because I subsequently decided that the G80 setups would not be used as I had envisaged, with probably only one of them at most having a place in my favoured toolset. 

Why so many photos?

Over the course of 12 years I have probably captured over 200,000 images. In the past couple of years I have used aperture bracket bursts some of the time for botanical subjects. This produces seven images for each press of the shutter button. However, for the first 10 years  or so (covering the majority of the captures) I used individual single shots. In a single day, even without bracketing, I have very often captured several hundred images, and on some days over a thousand. Why so many captures?

Several reasons. One is that for a lot of my subjects I have very high failure rates. A lot of the shots are unusable, most often because the centre of focus is not in exactly the right place and so the wrong bits of the subject are in focus (wrong compared to how I want the image to look). The smaller the subject is the more difficult it is to get the focus placement right. Also, it is often breezy around here and plants move around in the breeze, the longer and thinner their stems the more they move. Most of the invertebrates I photograph are on plants, so even if they are standing still they move as the plants they are on move in the breeze. Also, whether or not it is breezy, invertebrate subjects may also wander around. Or even if they are standing still and there is no breeze bits of them may wave around, antennae especially, and legs when they are grooming. And I work hand-held a lot of the time, which adds to the variability of where the focus is centred. So I often take multiple shots to increase the chances of getting at least one that is appropriately focused.

I always take a few shots if I get a chance (not just with invertebrates, but with plants too). Of course with invertebrates they may not give me that chance. The breezier the conditions, the more shots I take. I hardly ever stop to review shots to see if they have worked; I don't find that a practical proposition out in the field, looking at the tiny camera screen, and with invertebrates it is easy to miss good shots if you get sidetracked into examining shots you have already taken rather than paying attention to the subject.

Sometimes an animal may be doing something interesting - building a web, wrapping prey, feeding, grooming, mating, shedding its skin, inflating its wings, blowing bubbles, interacting in some way with another animal of its own kind or a different kind, or just wandering around. When I find something like that going on I keep taking photos for as long as it goes on, or until it becomes too repetitive for me to want to continue. This might involve hundreds of captures for a single subject. 

Click on an image to see a larger version

One subject, wasps flying in an out of their nest, involved several thousand captures (twice over, for different nests in different years). Wasps are very, very difficult to capture in flight even when they are flying in and out of the same small hole, and the failure rate for this was very high indeed. It wasn't simply that the focus was a bit misplaced. The wasps movee so fast that very often the wasp would have left the frame by the time the image was captured.

For botanical shots I am interested in the way the look of a subject changes as the light changes and I often photograph the same subject in different conditions on different days, sometimes on the same day. And sometimes a plant is sitting in pooled light coming through foliage above it which is moving in the breeze, creating continually changing patterns of light and shade. When I come across this I may take lots of shots in the hope that one or more looks good. The patterns change too fast to wait for a good pattern and then photograph it. Like with wasps in flight, by the time you and the camera have reacted the moment has passed, so  you end up capturing lots of images in the hope of getting some that work. I also explore different angles on the subject as this can radically affect the look of backgrounds and how well they fit with the subject.

With aperture bracketing I take seven shots for each press of the shutter button, from f/2.8 to f/22. This lets me choose the balance I like for a particular scene between the amount of the subject that is in focus and the way that the background looks, both of which change as the aperture changes. This often involves slow shutter speeds for the smaller apertures and I usually capture several bracket sets of a subject, here too hoping that each aperture will have worked in at least one of the bracket sets.

Here are some examples where I kept several of the images from a seven image aperture bracket set. I do like having a bit going on, or at least hinted at, in my backgrounds if it seems to be harmonious with the subject, to add some context and/or add some visual variety and complexity. Many people of course prefer simpler, plainer backgrounds. 

Another cause of larger numbers of captures is that for invertebrates I like to have series of images of a subject varying from close in on the subject out to seeing the subject quite small in its wider environment. 

In such cases I will be doing multiple captures for each framing, trying to get a good result for that framing. The variation in framing can go on for some time if the subject is doing something interesting or moving around.

So I capture lots of shots to try and get some that I like.

But why do I keep so many similar shots? Wouldn't it be better just to select the best ones and throw the rest away? To some extent that is what I am aiming for with my portfolio, and with this blog too for that matter, picking the ones I like best. 

As mentioned in the first post in this blog, Flickr is something of a dumping ground for my photos, and a few of other people's photos that I have worked on, with their permission, to discuss on line. However, I do cull quite heavily as I go through a set of images. With invertebrates, where the number of captures is typically much higher than with botanical subjects, I often get rid of 80 to 95% or so of the captured images, either because they didn't work, or when they did work because I only want to keep one of a set of very similar images. It is similar with common birds in flight, where I keep relatively few of the captures. With botanical subjects and my infrequent other subjects I tend to capture smaller numbers of images and keep a greater proportion of them.

When I'm getting ready to finalise a set of images to put up at Flickr I look through it as a slideshow and where there are images that are too similar to retain (my) interest I remove some, and I keep doing that until I'm content to sit through the whole lot without getting bored by repitition of too similar scenes and subjects. I'm sure there are still more than many people would want to see, but that is where the portfolio will hopefully be of some benefit, and perhaps this blog too.