Im photographing a small object, such as a diamond ring, full frame on 4×5 inch film and I cannot keep the entire object sharp even at small apertures. How do I get more depth of field?
There are no magic lenses that can get you more depth of field. Large format close-up and macro photography is difficult and depth of field is always an issue. Finding a solution requires compromises. If you stop your lens down to very small f-stops to increase the depth of field, you will suffer from a loss of overall sharpness due to diffraction. Of course, you can use the swings and tilts of your view camera to control where you put the plane of sharp focus in your image. This may help. Otherwise your best option may be to reduce the size of your image. Depth of field will then increase. One technique that might be useful is to use a shorter focal length lens. This will increase the depth of field. The resulting negative can then be printed and cropped to achieve the desired final image size. Unfortunately this will result in some quality loss due to the increased enlargement of the negative.
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