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How to avoid defraction at smaller apertures?


3 years 6 months ago #697384 by Ryan711
As you creep past f/16, is there anyway to avoid defraction?  Seems like a waste of aperture if you can't use with out getting the negative effects of defraction showing its ugly face.   

Is there anything that can be done?  

Thank you

Ryan
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3 years 6 months ago - 3 years 6 months ago #697385 by Nikon Shooter
Nope… nothing can be done, physical law.

Diffraction refers to various phenomena that occur when a wave
encounters an obstacle or a slit. It is defined as the bending of
waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture
into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture.
Light is free… capturing it is not!
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3 years 6 months ago #697442 by Shadowfixer1
Diffraction is present at all apertures. It just becomes more prevalent the more you stop down. You can't change physics. Nothing can be done to avoid it. It's a juggling act between DOF and diffraction. You have to choose which one to favor.
www.betterphoto.com/?ramshots
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3 years 6 months ago #697446 by Ozzie_Traveller
G'day Ryan

Many (many) years ago - using a 4" x 5" plate film camera while doing photographic studies at uni, those lenses stopped down to F64 and one even went to F128. While diffraction caused some loss of fine sharpness, the addition of huge amounts of depth of field overcame any visual issues from the diffraction

Back in 35mm film days, I created an adapter to mount a raw 50mm lens onto my extension tubes and it went from F3,5 to F32 as its last marked stop, but the aperture ring went further, maybe to F64? who knows? I used it widely at the kitchen table for closeups, illuminated by continuous lighting and total stillness of body movement so as to not cause any vibrations. Some of those images were 'pretty spunky' but lost now as the years pass by

Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/
Phil from the great land Downunder
www.flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/
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3 years 6 months ago #697732 by fmw
I'm with Phil here.  While there is no way to avoid diffraction, there are many ways to ignore it.  It is one of very minor optical phenomena that amateurs worry about too much.  I have many crisp, sharp stunning images shot at f64 on 4X5 transparencies. 
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3 years 6 months ago #698256 by TonyBeach
It's more a question of how to deal with it. Apply judicious sharpening targeted for the intended display size. As to why you would want to stop down that much in the first place, the display size effects the DOF, so ironically the larger the display size the shallower the DOF and the more noticeable diffraction becomes -- though that is all negated by viewing distance which is presumably inversely proportional to the display size (though by no means is that always the case -- e.g., "pixel peeping").
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3 years 6 months ago #698268 by fmw

TonyBeach wrote: the display size effects the DOF, so ironically the larger the display size the shallower the DOF and the more noticeable diffraction becomes


Depth of field is an optical property.  Whatever depth of field exists in the image is recorded permanently on the sensor or film.  The size at which the image is displayed has no effect on DOF.

If you meant sensor size or film format then the same holds true except that a longer lens is required to capture the same image on a larger format.  Longer lenses by definition provide less depth of field  than shorter lenses.  Perhaps that is what you meant.
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