Hello - I've been trying to time-lapse some flower blooms and have been having difficulties with very narrow field of views. The flowers tend to move around as they bloom and inevitably move outside of the field of view and out of focus. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with this and might have some tips. I know that turning on auto-focus is not a good idea, but there's really no way for me to predict where the flower will move to as it blooms. Camera is a Nikon D610 and lens is a Tokina 100mm f2.8. On my last round of shots I had aperture set to f13 and still had the flower move out of focus. Any tips or advice would be appreciated.

thx!!

This post was last modified: 2022-12-29, 15:42 by c_joerg.

I've already created some macro timelapses. A small sensor with a large depth of field has an advantage here.
Small focal lengths also have an advantage
But I've also had good experiences with AF.

https://youtu.be/Tm8DI8bC8gw

https://youtu.be/z5p8p86tElM

This post was last modified: 2023-02-23, 00:28 by nudenex.

It all depends on what kind of flower you are shooting. I think carnations would be good for this, I remember buying bulk carnation flowers for Christmas and decided to experiment and film them wilting. It worked the first time and the video was very interesting and cool. I called this video "The Carnation Life Cycle" and it is my pride. I show it to my guests all the time.

Have you tried supporting the flower just out of frame or behind the flower, ie by fastening it to a stake or similar?
You could obviously move further back and crop in post, but that would defeat the purpose of using a macro lens, only other alternative is focus stacking, it's theoretically possible but would require advanced equipment and post processing