How I shoot MACRO – CROP to change Depth of Field (DOF)

think DOF is one important part we need to understand if we serious in MACRO photography … it is just as important as we need to know about light ….

an Old share How I Shoot MACRO – What Depth of Field (DOF) you have while shooting MACRO (I will migrate it ASAP….)

I am not want to discuss further on what is DOF, what DOF we have while we do MACRO … but I am sharing how do we increase DOF, as below

i. choose best angle to have more visible DOF
ii. using Post Processing – Stack – also discussed previously
iii. shoot smaller magnification and crop (if you want to know how smaller magnification affect the DOF please refer above link)

I have a same spider but slight change of angle but different magnification as shown below

@1:1 magnification

@2:1 magnification



I simply crop the 1:1 picture to magnification close to ~2:1

and let’s me share further magnification and further crop picture below to show what’s the different of DOF

@biggest magnification with full 21 mega pixels.

@crop from ~2:1 picture …lost ~50% of the resolution but check out the DOF it have more than the biggest magnification one

@crop from ~1:1 picture …lost >75% of the resolution but check out the DOF it have more than the biggest magnification one

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so if you do not mind lost the resolution which you may not want to print yours’ picture big …. crop to get bigger magnification also another choice for you .. but if you prefer to have max resolution to have your picture to be print big or sale …. use the stack method … (for the stack … you may also use 3rd party software e.g. CombineZM …..

and for me … I seldom crop my MACRO or Landscape picture >20% … the crop normally is plan while I shoot so it can be off center or not too tight into single frame …..