Shoot beautiful spring flower close-up images – and you don't need a full-frame camera, here's how

One of the great things about shooting on cameras with APS-C or Micro 4/3 sensors is that the crop factor these formats apply can help us achieve even greater magnification from our lenses, macro optics or otherwise.

In close-up photography, this can be a benefit, especially if your lens doesn’t allow life-size magnification on its own. However, the closer crop means, if we shoot at a life-size 1:1 setting, we exclude much of the background.

While this might not sound like a problem in many cases, there are times when you want both incredible detail in your subject – the level only seen at life-size – and location elements behind it, to set the scene.

This is one advantage of shooting macro on a medium format camera; you can get close to small subjects but the larger sensor captures more of the surroundings. This creates a unique blend of wider composition and attractive bokeh.

In digital photography, we can take things even further.

By stitching multiple macro images together, we can create a shot with huge amounts of detail in the subject, plenty of background elements, for context and beautiful bokeh to smooth out any distractions.

This blended image is impossible to create in a single frame, truly giving it the wow factor. It’s important, however, to carefully follow the workflow shown here
to achieve reliably successful results.

The setup

Mirrorless or DSLR camera
A camera with advanced live view features is particularly helpful.

Dedicated macro lens
An optic capable of 1:1 life-size magnification allows extreme detail capture.

Low-level tripod
Being able to remove, swing or reverse the centre column allows near-ground level work.

Ball head
This type of head allows maximum freedom of camera placement.

Shooting steps

1. Match subject height

Although a common tip for extending depth-of-field in macro photography is to shoot at 90° to the subject, and our goal is to reduce DOF, lowering the camera to ground level enables an interesting bug’s-eye view. It also allows for attractive natural backlighting.

2. Choose maximum f/stop

To maximize the visibility of the ‘impossible’ depth-of-field effect, choose your lens’s smallest f/number, in this case, f/2.8. This is especially helpful where you don’t own a true macro lens and have to shoot from further away.

3. Find closest focusing distance

Capture as much subject detail as you possibly can by ensuring that you are using maximum magnification. Set the closest focusing distance your lens provides, frame the subject and then slowly move the camera back until you can achieve a sharp focus. Zoom into the preview image to check critical detail.

4. Shoot centre frame

Compose the first frame so that the composition is optimal for the subject. Use this frame to ensure you have sufficient space above and below the main areas of the scene to allow for cropping or filling of stitching ‘gaps’ during editing.

5. Reframe and refocus

Rotate the camera or, if using a rail, slide it to the left to compose a frame to one side of the subject. At such close focusing distances, even small shifts in focal plane position can blur the subject, so zoom in to check identical focus placement.

6. Shoot excess frames

Repeat the step above, but this time, capture an image to the right of the main subject. Once you’re happy with it, try shifting the camera up and down to capture more ‘space’ to work with in processing. This will allow you to have multiple crops and formats to suit the scene. Scrutinise each frame for sharpness.

Pro Tip

Introduce flash to ensure consistency

One of the challenges of stitching panoramas in software is changes in lighting between shots, which can create further blending inconsistencies. While this is difficult to control in landscape photography, in macro, we can maintain global exposure and lighting direction by overpowering the ambient light with flash.

Use a low power output, diffuse the light by shooting through a diffusing material and mimic the position of the sun with flashgun placement.

Editing steps

1. Sync settings

Select all your frames and activate the synchronise settings function. You can then apply basic adjustments, including Exposure, Contrast and Temperature across all images to be stitched. Also, reduce noise and apply essential sharpening at this stage.

2. Create panorama

In Lightroom, keep the images selected and go to Photo > Photomerge > Panorama. Leave the photomerge method as Cylindrical or Spherical. Ensure images are arranged in the correct sequence before merging.

3. Realign segments

Due to the expanse of bokeh, your software may struggle with the panorama. Here, a gap was left between two segments. Since we chose to retain layers, we selected the orphaned image and, with reduced Opacity, manually placed it.

4. Retouch seams

Due to the blending challenges and manual placement, there were some remaining seams where segments met. Using the Spot Healing Brush and Patch Tools, we brushed over gaps and cropped white spaces at the edges, choosing a wide aspect.

5. Dodge and Burn

Duplicate the Background (Ctrl/Cmd + J) and navigate to Filter > Camera Raw Filter. Randomise the light by adding some exposure spotlights with the Radial Filter. We also dodged some background highlights to give the raindrops some extra sparkle.

6. Adjust color balance

Re-open your merged image in your RAW editor to apply final colour adjustments. In our shot, we felt that the green stems were too visible, so reduced Yellow Saturation in the HSL tab. We also tweaked the petal colour using the Calibrate tab.

Before & After

Before

After

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