Focus stacking experiment

[John Liddle]

I have been playing with my new ring flash today.

This head of orchids is about 10cm front to back and the mid-point to camera distance is 45cm.

With the a 100 macro lens at F13, calculation gives a DOF of 1.2cm and yet......

The whole spray is in decent focus - a good demonstration of the possibilities of focus stacking.

No good for anything that moves of course, since you need to take multiple shots (12 in this case) at different focus points.

5DJL2440 cropped by John Liddle, on Flickr

[Dave_S]

Re: Focus stacking experiment

That worked well John.

Did you stack in Photoshop, or something like Zerene Stacker?

Dave

[Tigger]

Re: Focus stacking experiment

good example of focus stacking - but for me the background isn't working that well, plus if you'd closed down a lot more you wouldn't have needed to stack and could have lost the background further - At a guess F22 would have got this in a single shot ?

[John Liddle]

Re: Focus stacking experiment

Dave - I imported the images into LR and then Photo - Edit in - Open as layers in PS. Once in PS, select all layers then Edit - Auto-align layers. When that has finished and with all layers still selected then Edit - Auto-blend & select stacking option.

Ian - I quite agree about the background - I paid no attention to that since this was an experiment in technique only. Even at f32, the DOF is still just under 3cm and so would not cover the whole spray of the flowers.

[tesarver]

Re: Focus stacking experiment

Nicely done John

Tom