Photo by Steve Berardi
This weekend I read an article by Wendy L. Turner in Nature Photographer Magazine, and learned a new tip on how to get sharper flower photographs: position your camera so the sensor is parallel to the most important plane of the flower.
When photographing flowers, you will most likely use a telephoto or macro lens with a wide aperture (to get that great blurry background), so proper focus is very subtle and extremely difficult to achieve.
Positioning your camera so the sensor is parallel to the most important plane of the flower will help put all important parts of the flower at the same distance from your sensor, so all those parts will be in sharp focus.
To illustrate this idea, consider the photograph at the beginning of this post–it was taken with a 100 mm macro lens, at f/5.6. This flower is almost perfectly flat, so my sensor was almost perfectly parallel to its petals. If my sensor wasn’t parallel to the petals, then one side of the flower would have been out of focus.
So, when you’re photographing a flower, don’t just think about what aperture you should use, but also consider what the most important plane of the flower is, and make sure your sensor is parallel to that plane. Otherwise, you won’t get the sharp focus you’re looking for.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good article . I do however have a few problems with it . Since focus is critcle I would like to suggest that the smallest apperature would be the best solition . Even at that you may only have 1/4 in. in focus . As you stated the camera must be on the same plane as your subject . Use of a tripod is mandatory as most shutter speeds will be slow . There is of course no wind to deal , ever :-}) . Also to be kept in mind is the fact of prime focus with your lense . Small f stops may not give the best sharpness . On &on &on Dwight B
Nice article..i like picture that include depth ..bt the the closer we focus a lens, the less depth of field we have in flower photography and to get through this issue i align my camera with the flower, as much as possible that is, make the film plane –the back of my camera – parallel with the plane of the subject. If the two are aligned perfectly, a large depth of field isn’t necessary…i also try to capture flowers in bunch and concentrate more on the background..