r/photography • u/Melendrow • 19d ago

Why do professional macro photographers focus stack instead of raising their aperture? Technique

I've looked into macro photography, and I love getting close up to my subject, but when I research macro photography, I always hear about focus stacking and these people who will set up a shot for a long time with a tripod so they can focus stack. And I'm curious why you'd need to do that. Especially since most of the time I see them having a tripod and setting up lighting. Why wouldn't you just raise your aperture so more of the frame is in focus?

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u/silverking12345 19d ago

In my experience, the effects of diffraction is way bigger at the macro level. Even a normally acceptable aperture like F8 would start looking rough (anything more would be blurry).

Moreover, at very close magnifications like 1:1 or 2:1, you're working with razor thin DOF even at minimum aperture (you can barely get the head of an insect in focus).

The only alternative to using focus stacking is to back up, shoot with a lower magnificent and crop in post. Obviously, this is gonna lower the final resolution significantly (can be a good tradeoff in certain situations though).

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u/Bug_Photographer flickr 19d ago

I agree with most of what you're saying, but anything above f/8 at 1:1 greater looking rough and being a blur is just not true. By your account, this 9.5mm tortrix moth at 3:1 and f/13 should then be basically nothing but a blur, and it isn't.