I acquired a greenhouse last July and kept it heated until November, but since then it has been left to the elements. All I can do is plan for the day when I turn the heat back on, which probably will be early April. I sketched out my plan for next year, ordered all the plants and seeds, and started to wait.

July 2025

The wait was driving me crazy, so I thought of ways I could get started. The answer hit me: Succulents. I have had two plants forever, Aloe Vera and a plant which I misidentified for decades but which I now believe is a Cuban Oregano. I also have two other succulents recently received from relatives, a Thanksgiving Cactus and what I am calling a Tiger Tooth Aloe, even though it doesn't fit the description 100%. For the most part, succulents are cool little plants and will not die if you neglect them for a few weeks or even months. I thought, "I should get a little Jade for an office plant."

I got the Jade, and a couple of other succulents. And some more, and some more, and some more. Less than a month the count is up to 29 new succulents. They are all different except I got a second, bigger Jade. Succulents are slow-growing this time of year, so I'm taking pictures as I acquire them so I can tell later if they have grown.

I have a high-end mirrorless camera and a dedicated macro lens, so taking picture of these things should be a snap. But I was reminded very quickly that the ability to get very close just magnifies (so to speak) the problem of depth of field.

If you take a macro picture of a round plant, a significant part of the image will be out of focus. The first thing you can do is use a smaller f-stop, which helps a little bit. You also want to use a low ISO such as 100 to control image noise. With the smaller aperture and low ISO, you have to use a slow shutter speed, so you need a tripod. Even after all that, the depth of field often is insufficient.

There is an automatic focus-bracketing function built into my camera. You set the initial focus at the front of the object, set the number of images to take and how much it changes focus between each image. Stack them all in Photoshop or some other application, and an image with great depth of field is produced. The image of this little Sempervivum (which BTW might be dead) is 20 stacked images with a focus increment of 1. Camera settings were f/5.6, 0.8 second exposure, 100 ISO.

Planned focus bracketing, 20 stacked images

It's also possible to combine images without using the camera's automatic function. This image is a stack of only two images which I did not intentionally bracket. But one had the center in focus, and the other had the outside rosettes in focus. They weren't framed exactly the same, so Photoshop automatically aligned them while stacking. There still is an out-of-focus zone between the middle and the sides, but stacking the two images allowed me to salvage the situation.

Impromptu focus bracketing, 2 stacked images

I will do some more experimenting, but I think my next attempt will be fewer than 20 images (let's try 6) with a focus increment greater than 1 (such as 3) and an f/stop of 8, keeping the 100 ISO and setting the shutter speed as appropriate.

The linked photo gallery includes most of the succulents I have acquired. I took most of them before I started focus bracketing. This first image shows that sometimes you want part of the subject to be soft.

Echeveria Lola