When you photograph something flat, make the back of the camera as parallel as possible to the plane of the subject. That will increase depth of field. When doing closeup work where depth of field is inherently shallow, this technique will help insure that the image is tack sharp from edge to edge. You can also use a small lens aperture if the camera is somewhat oblique to the subject, but since f/8 is considered the sharpest f/stop, using this parallel technique allows you to have complete DOF even if the aperture is f/8. If you are not sure if the back of the camera is parallel, look at it from the side and it's easy to know.
This is a picture of lichen I captured in Iceland. I took this with a 50mm macro lens and 1/50th of a second at f/22 and 640 ISO. Because the rock surface had some contours, I used a small aperture.
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