Spear Thistle

[carregwen]

This was picked from our garden when my Head Gardener wasn't looking. Six manually focussed shots stacked in Helicon s/w to create composite. Lit by single studio flash head on right and reflector on left. ISO100, 1/125s, f14. Canon 5D and Sigma 105 macro. Cropped (obviously) to square.

CandC welcome.

[sococsi]

Re: Spear Thistle

A great picture worth putting on any wall! really sharp..... I dream!

[Stuart Rae]

Re: Spear Thistle

Hi Rob,

That's beautiful. Just watch out for the head gardener's secateurs.

Stuart

[Bandit]

Re: Spear Thistle

Very nice Rob.
I have not tried focus stacking...yet. I have CS4 and I understand it has that facility. Does anyone know whether it is as good a tool as Helicon?
Rob did you use a focus rack?
Cheers
Ian

[carregwen]

Re: Spear Thistle

Hi Rob,
Just watch out for the head gardener's secateurs.

Stuart

Now't to cut.

Thanks to you and sococsi for the comment.

[Bandit]

Re: Spear Thistle

Just found your answer to another post on stacking Rob. ie no focus rack

[Stuart Rae]

Re: Spear Thistle

Rob did you use a focus rack?

Hi Ian,

Experiment has led me to the conclusion that the camera/subject distance must be constant while shooting the frames. See my post in the Software forum.

Regards,

Stuart

[carregwen]

Re: Spear Thistle

Very nice Rob.
I have not tried focus stacking...yet. I have CS4 and I understand it has that facility. Does anyone know whether it is as good a tool as Helicon?
Rob did you use a focus rack?
Cheers
Ian

Bandit

CS4 does have the facility to stack - not sure about previous versions. I have just tried it for the first time. I took three manually focussed shots on RAW/L to get both. Ran them both through Helicon and CS4. The results were pretty much the same, but I didn't shoot anything with a lot of fine detail. Will try it tomorrow.

I did it by...

1. Select files in Bridge.
2. TOOLS/PHOTOSHOP/LOAD AS LAYERS. This loads them to PS as layers.
3. Select all layers in PS and EDIT/AUTOALIGN then EDIT/AUTOBLEND with the stack option ticked.

Works OK for RAW and JPEG. Not as easy to use as Helicon though. I think you can download Helicon on trial. Give it a go to compare with CS4.