Hi all, here's my next installment of technique questions. This one is about correcting focus, when you stack multiple filters onto a lens.
Ok. I'm going to post a photo (see below). You'll immediately see that it's not exposed correctly, but I want you to look past that and zoom in a bit. You'll see the focus is off. The waterfall rocks are very soft and notice the morning dove on the fence, you can barely tell it's a dove!!
When I had this image focused, everything looked perfectly sharp, even the dove! AFTER I shot it, everything was sharp (except the dove, she flew away). But when I developed it, you can see, it's not very good. I checked the negative and it matches the image here. So something went wrong.
I believe my problem was filter stacking. In this case, I wanted to get a little wild. I used the following: Red, ND2, CP and a 6-stop ND (100x100). That's 12-2/3 stops in all. I was trying to get the waterfall to blur but you can't see that because I didn't get the exposure right.
I did a little digging and asked a few questions and I believe my problem is that with all those filters, I moved the focus point off the film plane.
So, if that's correct, how the heck are you supposed to refocus after stacking all those filters? I can't even see the image on the GG. My understanding is also that you should focus using stacked UV filters to achieve the same focal distance, but I don't own any UV filters for my LF lens, let alone 3 of them.
When technique do you use to ensure proper focus when stacking filters?
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