Sharpening my macro skills...

[PapaJames]

I found this conglomerate sedimentary rock out in the front yard just before mowing the lawn. Of course, we (photo-heads) look at EVERYTHING as a photo op, so I put it in my pocket for later.

Besides improving my skills and producing a photo of my treasure my goal was threefold:
1. I wanted a pure white background with minimal shadow.
2. I wanted enough depth of field for everything to be in focus.
3. I wanted enough contrast to bring out the details of the rock.

First of all, here's the result:



And how I did it:
1. The pure white background, although seemingly simple, is a challenge. I don't have a fancy set of lights, but I did create a lightbox with heavy white poster board. That and two Ikea swing-arm lamps with 125W (equiv.) natural light fluorescent spotlights do pretty well though. I still got a bluish tint and wrote a note to myself to learn more about white balance. I eventually handled the blue tint in Paint Shop Photo Pro.

2. Getting all to focus was a matter of setting my camera to manual and adjusting the aperture to f/20. I set the ISO to 800, which is still very clean on the Canon Xsi. Even at that, the shutter speed needed to be a relatively slow 1/50 sec. I also went with manual focus. The small aperture required more light and lower shutter speed which wasn't a problem. My model wasn't going anywhere and my Manfrotto tripod kept everything still.

3. I usually try to slightly underexpose my shots as it seems to help with contrast immensely. I took a good 40 shots and finally found a combination I could work with. Although it's easy to think, "I can photoshop this later.", I've really been working hard on getting it right in the field. I'm of the opinion that post-processing is an integral part of the whole photo process, but I want SOOC photos to look good too!

My post processing consisted of adjusting the brightness and contrast, sharpening, and cropping. I bumped up the brightness just enough to kill the blue tint and then adjusted contrast to make up for the brightness increase and enhance the clarity. I usually use the "Sharpen More" tool -once- in Paint Shop Photo Pro at the risk of adding noise.

Here is the before photo... SOOC:

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/20.0
Focal Length: 34 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

And just for grins and giggles... here is a sample of Auto settings with flash on and no extra lighting. Of note, look at the focus that the camera chooses... the result of a wide open lens causing a shallow depth of field.

Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 34 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: On, Fired
I sure hope this will be of some help to you! I'm a fairly recent beginner, so I tend to write in that mode!

Thanks for looking!