@TimmyG I think this is a good shot Tim, However if you don't me saying especially as I'm very new to macro/close up photography so certainly don't want to offend in any way. But this doesn't look like a focussing issue to me, it looks more like camera movement.
I agree with Bryn though the contrast & lighting look just fine to me.
Only my opinion of coarse.,
Thanks George, and your opinion is very welcome! I don't think you could ever offend me by giving an honest opinion and in fact I fully encourage it!
You know I did originally dismiss the camera movement thing but you may be on to something. More about this shortly...
If flash is the dominant source of light then the effective shutter speed is the length of the (very brief) flash pulse, which pretty much rules out camera movement issues, even at very high magnification, With Tim's lighting setup, and assuming he used his maximum flash sync shutter speed or close to it, and assuming he wasn't using FP/HSS flash, I imagine flash was the dominant source of light, in which case I doubt the problem would have been down to camera movement.
But there are some ifs and buts in this, so I could be wrong. Well, I could be wrong anyway of course, for entirely different reasons!
Nick, you are right of course, I usually shoot around 1/200 (which I believe is my max synch speed, or it could be 1/250, I'll need to double check) and I am definitely not shooting with HSS. That said I have been lowering my shutter speed to try to increase the background exposure, but usually no lower that 1/160. I think that should still be enough to freeze the subject however your comments made me think of a couple of things:
I had at some point switch to rear curtain synch for my flash. I can't now remember why I did this, but I'm sure they was a valid reason at the time. I may have read something on another macro photographer's blog about it and thought I would give it a try. Naturally I had forgotten all about this, and it may not be a factor, but equally could be, so I have switched it back to front curtain for the time being.
I do find I am very prone to moving either the shutter speed or aperture by mistake with the camera. It's very small for my big hands, and there is a dial on the rear that can be used to control both these things. My fingers often roll across this by mistake, particularly if I am twisting my camera at some funny angle (which is pretty much all the time). It could be I was shooting at a less than ideal shutter speed purely by accident! I need to go back to the original files to check..
On top of all this, I was holding a leaf up behind this fellow to prevent light fall off (and a black background). Of course this means I was shooting one handed, so this compounded with rear curtain flash synch and perhaps a slower shutter speed may well have resulted in some camera movement. Typically there are a lot of variables that may be involved and I am still getting used to the new gear. It may very well be the case that I need much more practice!
You're perfectly correct Nick in your assumption providing the sole light source was flash. But if there was any ambient light around then that could show up some camera movement. I was just trying to help in sorting the problem out by offering an opinion.
George.
And help you did! Thanks again
Quite so, and a good thing too IMO. That's the way we all help one another progress.
Indeed.
This is probably not a very good example for getting to the crux of the issue, mainly because it's a stack. Slight misalignments of the individual frames could confuse the issue, and of course the end result of all this still has very narrow DoF (it's not a full stack by any means). I think I will need to present some single frames and hopefully that will provide a better base for you to help me analyse further