Skills of changing focus and taking flowers

Lead: Flower photography is favored by photographers, and different themes and shooting techniques often produce different image effects. In this tutorial, we will use new skills to shoot creative macro flowers. This course mainly teaches you how to take three independent exposure photos with different focuses, and then get magical images through layer mixing, so this course includes two parts: pre-shooting and post-processing. The steps are complete and detailed, and novices are not afraid to learn.

Skills of shifting focus and taking flowers Before starting the real tutorial, let's talk about the light, so I won't go into details about the importance of light in photography, so in order to get the best effect, please choose to shoot in a warm and soft light environment.

Also, although we are talking about the shooting of flowers here, you can also try to apply it to other shooting objects, such as forests and beaches. As long as there are elements in the shooting scene that you want to keep clear focus, you can lose focus.

How to shoot

Theme and background

Flowers are the ideal object for this shooting technique. Brightly colored blocks are ideal backgrounds. Blurred, purple and pink backgrounds can improve the picture effect. If the mottled light filtered by the trees can be captured again, the whole photo will give off an attractive fragrance.

Basic tripod

Because we need to take three photos of the same flower, we need a stable tripod to ensure that the flowers in the three photos we take are the same, so that the later photos can be aligned accurately. So, when you decide on the composition, please make sure that neither the tripod nor the camera will move.

Camera settings

Set the camera to Aperture Priority (AV) mode and set it to the maximum aperture value available. Here we set f/2.8. Then keep the ISO low, and the ideal ISO is 100. However, if shooting in a breezy situation, the subject always swings with the wind, so it is necessary to appropriately push up ISO and increase the shutter speed to prevent the subject from blurring.

Real-time view mode

Enable live view mode, and make composition according to trisection (you can turn on grid lines in the settings to help make composition). When writing a composition, make sure that the topic is at the center of interest. In the image here, we arrange the region of interest in the upper third of the frame, slightly to the right.

Manual focus

When you take a photo with a shallow depth of field, most of the image will be blurred, so you need to focus accurately. Switch the lens to manual focusing (MF), aim the live view focusing frame at the flowers, then use the zoom button to get a view magnified ten times, adjust the focusing ring until the flowers are completely clear, and then press the shutter.

Shift the focus (to sb)

Keep the tripod and camera still and take the second and third photos. In the second photo, adjust the focus ring to the right to make the flower slightly out of focus, and then shoot. In the third photo, rotate the focus ring again and take another out-of-focus photo of the flower.

What happened afterwards?

ACR treatment

Download the original picture we provided and follow the steps! Drag three focus_start files into the ACR. Click Select All in the upper left corner to adjust three pictures at the same time, which not only saves time, but also ensures the uniformity of photo effects.

Basic adjustment

Set the color temperature to 4600 to make the picture warmer. Exposure value is 0.90, which improves the image brightness. Highlight and white are set to -45 at the same time, which darkens the stiff light in the picture. Set the black value to -9 to enhance the contrast between shadows and midtones. The resolution is 28, which enhances the local contrast. Set the saturation to 4 to enhance the color, and then click Open Image to open three photos in PS.

Add layer

If you open the image in a separate window, use the move tool and hold down the Shift key to drag the files start_2 and start_ 1 into the file start file to form two new layers.

Add layer mask.

Add layer mask to layer 1 and layer 2 respectively, and then choose a soft black brush. The pixel size of the brush can be adjusted by itself. Then use a brush on the top layer to erase the parts you want to highlight. After you finish, you can hide the operation by hiding or reversing the color, and then apply the next layer, which will be much more intuitive.

? Brightness/contrast

Continue to switch between layers to hide and show, and smear photos until you get a satisfactory overall effect. Finally, adjust the brightness and contrast. The brightness is 10 and the contrast is 18. It's done.