To follow up on the post I made about how rear tilt affects DOF and plane of focus, there was something else I noticed on my camping trip.

Some of the compositions I had set up, when I measured the rail distance between near and far to calculate the required f-stop (I tried both x5 and using the Rody calculator), ended up with f45 or even higher in some cases.

Having read about diffraction, I was a bit concerned this might be too small an aperture, on the other hand I really wanted everything in the shot sharp. I have yet to develop the shots, but will be looking for signs of diffraction when I do.

Since it's an f-stop issue for DOF, and not simply a "too much light" issue (where I could use a ND filter or similar to bring it down), how are some of the ways people deal with this? Take the shot and accept any softness? Re-compose? What else could I do in these situations?