DoF conundrum for archive shoot

V8burble

V8burble

Suspended / Banned
Messages
3,459
Name
Andrew
Edit My Images
Yes
I am shooting a set of archive photographs of some carved ivories, one of which is a casket/lidded box approx 10" wide x 5" deep x 4" high (like a tea caddy). Lighting-wise I am absolutely fine with and able to highlight the detailed carving nicely with cross lighting and varying fill to achive a nice balance but shooting at around 50mm focal length and at a camera to subject distance of about 14" to frame the box nicely for an isometric view I am stuck for DoF... I am limited to f/22 with my 24-70mm which doesn't result in enough DoF to cover the subject. So, my only option that I can see is to pull back further to increase the DoF, but for this type of photography the whole point is to document as much detail as possible which by pulling back further reduces the subject size in the uncropped frame and hence recorded detail. So it's a bit of a catch 22 situation. If I reduce focal length I introduce distortion... if I increase camera to subject distance I reduce detail. I guess, without the pixel count of say a D800 with which I could pull back from the subject and then heavily crop the image to fill the frame, I'm stuck. Maybe that's a good reason for me to buy a D800 ;)
The only solution I can see is to just rely on orthographic views of the box to represent the carving details and include the isometric purely for proportion purposes with the leading faces/edges in focus.
 
in addition, ND fiter's. Diffraction also rears its head at f22. Do you need to shoot with the subject full in the frame?
 
Last edited:
If he wants detail, he doesn't want to be shooting at f22
 
At 100mm shooting at 10 feet on a 1.6crop I would expect about an object of 1.5 feet long to totally fill the frame

At f8, I would expect to get just under 1.5 feet of depth of field

Looking at these figures, I would imagine there is a sweet spot at about 8 feet where the frame is suitably filled, whilst maintaining a good focus for the whole product
 
Hoppy's suggestions are the best, or at least the most practical. What you need to do here is to employ the principles of that nice Capt. Scheimflugg, a monorail camera with full movements is the best answer, but a tilt shift lens will do the job.

Richard King is right, diffraction (actually diffraction limitation) can start to be a problem at f/16 on a FF sensor, but f/16 isn't a line in the sand, sometimes it's necessary to go a bit smaller and lose a little bit of sharpness to gain DOF
 
Yes, my apologies... to clarify I would not actually shoot at f/22 but only documenting the extreme limitation and resulting DoF deficiency . In this instance I will shoot at around f/8-11 and stack (as suggested) but will hire a tilt shift and experiment before spending ££££.££

Thanks everyone :thumbs:
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top