For Gourd
	Part 3 Macro - Part 1
You might be asking yourself why did the previous pages have a dark background and this one a light background. I did it because with a light background like this, it causes your iris to (in camera vernacular/jargon) “stop down” giving you better visual acuity. Camera lenses are like the iris in our eyes. The size of the iris, aperture or “stop” plays a very large part in something called Depth of Field. Depth of field is simply the amount of the area your lens can see that is in focus. Some of you may have heard of F-stops. F-stops are preset aperture/opening sizes. The higher the F-stop the smaller the opening and the lower the F-stop the bigger the opening. Usually the high F-stops are used in very bright light and give you a broad range of depth of field. The lower the F-stop is used under lowlight conditions and your depth of field decreases. Just like our own iris. In bright light it stops down to decrease the amount of light reaching our retina and in low light it opens up to increase the amount of light reaching our retina. The prize in macro photography is Depth of Field. The more DOF you have, the more detailed the picture.
	This picture is the raw photo which became the one below.
	The picture is of the reproductive parts of a Vigna Caracalla. The size of the raw picture above is 20mb. The finished product is 1.2mb. I set my camera at F-8, backed up and deliberately lowered the EV more than usual because of the very delicate parts like the hair on the style then with software brightened it up again. I could have gotten closer with my camera, but with macro, the closer you get the less depth of field. By backing up a bit and shooting I gave the camera more leeway for DOF. This is why setting your camera to the highest pixel, quality is so important in macro. My camera’s highest settings give me 20 meg files which at 1 to 1 are huge. By being so huge I can crop out what I want and it will still be in focus and clear. For macro, ideally you need a graphics program. Something that will crop pictures, rotate and give you the ability to increase or decrease contrast and create your own photos within the program via cut and pasting. The one I use the most is an old version of Paint Shop Pro, version 7.02. I also have Photoshop and the zillions of plug-ins that go with it. I’m a down and dirty kinda gal. I like software that is basic and easy to use when it comes to photo manipulation.
	The picture on the left is the raw picture that the picture on the right was made from. With my software I flipped the picture over and cropped it. As you can see, the subject of both images is the same size. The raw picture was 20.2 megs and the finished product is 1.2 megs. Again, I cannot stress enough that you need to set your camera to the most pixels it offers.
	Focus
	Good focus in macro can be a challenge. That is why determining your camera’s focus threshold is so important. For a good macro shot I always take a minimum of 3 shots of the same subject. It usually works out to 4 or five. One close then one an inch or so farther away, and another one an inch or so farther away. Digital’s auto focus can sometimes work against you because there is too much other stuff around what you want to take to focus on. The quick fix for that is to put a piece of paper behind what you are shooting, focus, remove the paper and shoot.
	Before your take your shot you should ask your self a few questions. 1. What kind of light do I have. 2. What is in the background. 3. What do I ultimately want to do with this picture. Once you have your answers shoot!
	Shots Ron Likes To See
	The next installment will be about cropping.
	Part Two - Part Four