My favorite style of shooting macro is having everything in focus in my subjects.
Some photographers like having some in focus and some out of focus, and some like soft focus with very little of the subject in focus, and that's a good thing, but I still like everything in focus.
I always tell photographers if you want to guarantee everything in focus shoot at the highest f/stop of your lens whether your lens goes to f/32 or maybe only f/22, but that is going to work the same, go to the highest f/stop for max depth of field.
I've gone out to shoot and set my f/stop to f/32 and shot the whole time without ever changing my f/32.
Many of you know that shooting at the highest f/stop numbers with cause diffraction, here's a link to a post about diffraction. f/32 and Sharpening - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer (tinylandscapes.com)
Many photographers say to avoid the diffraction never shoot over f/16, and to get the least diffraction and the sharpest images out of your lens, you want to shoot in the f/8 range.
The problem for macro photographers shooting in very close to our subjects we get very little in focus when shooting in an f/8 range.
Landscapes and wildlife photographers do a lot of their shooting in the f/8 range because when shooting subjects that are a great distance away, they will get great depth of field at f/8, so it works great for them, but doesn't work the same for macro.
So, to show just how shallow the depth of field is at f/8 I set up this peacock feather on a table and set up my tripod and camera into a macro range.
As you can see the front of the lens is set at an angle to the subject rather than parallel, and that is because sometimes you can't always get parallel to a subject, so you have to learn how to shoot a subject at bad angles which will increase the amount of depth of field you need to get the subject all in focus.
Here is the set up using my Tamron 90mm macro lens shooting at an extreme angle.
My first test shot I set the f/stop to f/8, and you can see I get very little of the feather in focus, which is why I rarely shoot in this range.
Unlike landscape wildlife photographers who get lots of depth of field shooting subjects at great distance away, macro photographers get very little in focus in this close.
Some of you are thinking that you can probably get enough depth of field at f/22 with a lens that will go to f/32 and not have to go all the way up to f/32, but not the case, still not getting the feather all in focus even at f/22. You can see the top and bottom of the feather is soft.
Now I set the f/stop to f/32 and you can see the whole feather is in much better focus. There is some softness in the details from the diffraction that I mentioned when shooting at f32, but not bad.
To correct the softness from the diffraction I use my sharpening filters in Smart Photo Editor and now I have a fully focus sharp feather.
Now if you have a tripod like my Vanguard that has a center post that would extend upward and into a horizontal position so I can place my camera directly over top of the feather with the front of the lens perfectly parallel to the flat feather I would not need a lot of depth of field so in that case I could shoot at f/8 and get it all in focus, but like I said we cannot always get parallel to subjects and need that higher f/stop for more depth of field.
I could still shoot at the f/32 of the flat subject when parallel and still get a good image, but with some diffraction which I know I can correct with sharpening, but why not just shoot it at the f/8 and not deal with diffraction.
Another problem when shooting close to our subjects is many times the subject has a lot of depth from front to back, so that also requires the higher f/stops for more depth of field.
In this subject I have two flowers with a lot of depth from the front of the front flower and the back end of the back flower. Placed a background behind to eliminate the clutter.
I may be able to get it all in focus at f/16 or f/22, but why bother shooting more images when I know by shooting at f/32 I'm guaranteed to get it all in focus, and I will correct the diffraction in post processing.
Here is the image at f/32, cropped, sharpened, altered color, and added a texture filter and white vignette.