are considered wide angle lenses, while any lenses longer that
50mm (105mm, 200mm) are considered telephoto lenses.
You can do focus stacking with almost any kind of lens
(including wide angle lenses) with the exception perhaps of
fisheye lenses. They are tough, although I have done it. And we
should differentiate between standard lenses and macro
lenses. A macro lens allows you to focus down to very short
distances from your subject, providing you with greater
magnification and thus huge images of tiny critters like ants, as
well as flowers, leaves, etc. Standard lenses don’t usually have
a focus distance close enough to do macro photography, so
take note before you purchase.
Close-up and macro lenses generally are labeled as such, using
the words “macro” or “micro,” so you need to differentiate between
(for example) a 105mm portrait lens from a 105mm macro lens,
although the macro lens can also shoot portraits, but not vice
versa. A 105mm portrait lens will not shoot macro subjects
because its closest-focus distance is too far away for close work.
You can’t get close enough to your subject. So, you will probably
want to get yourself a lens with at least some macro capability.The Quest for Depth of Field
As long as there have been cameras and lenses photographers
have struggled to achieve greater depth of field (DOF). When a
lens is wide open, the DOF is very shallow which means that, at
best, you can expect to have sharp focus only in one plane of the
photo. The rest of the frame will be more or less out of focus. With
extremely fast lenses (f/1.2, f/1.4) the depth of field can be razor
thin. Everything else is out-of-focus (OOF).
As we close down the lens (smaller openings) we achieve greater
and greater DOF until a point is reached where the effects of
diffraction (which see) set in and begin to destroy the overall
sharpness of the photo. Photographers are caught between the
devil and the deep blue sea, trapped by almost no DOF at wide
apertures and a loss of sharpness at narrow apertures, when
stopped down too far. That has been the traditional problem.
We all seem to like to see photos that embrace greater DOF and,
with the advent of focus stacking, this is becoming increasingly
possible. Focus stacking has been going on for a long time but until