Quote Originally Posted by Doremus Scudder View Post
) ends up placing "near" objects above the plane of sharp focus and "far" objects below it.
Excellent, I've definitely come to rely on what Mr. Luong calls the "Hansma" approach--one question I did have was that he seems to advocate making all of your movements first and only then using the focal scales to get the 1/2 delta between near and far bellows length. Is that your workflow as well?

Otherwise, I think the conceptual problem I'm having is that I want to turn that two-dimensional "plane-of-focus" into a 3-D wedge--ideally a splitting maul instead of a cheese knife--to sweep as much of the foreground into focus as possible.

FWIW, here's a shot that illustrates some of the problems I encountered last time out. Forum member Andy Tymon has been gracious enough to serve as a one-man Morbidity and Mortality Committee for me, but it would be very useful to me if others might let me know their workflow as well.

57baleen2401A by J Barnes, on Flickr