Focus Stacking Pictures Thread

I have just started learning this technic and would like to improve my skilss. Ideally, I would like to be able to use it to photograph difficult subjest such as insects. My first experience has been of still life subject. When it's not going to move, one has plenty of time to take a series of shots at different focus distances. I understand some do this using automatic devices. I have however sofar tried it both manually and automaticly using an app. Both have proven that can work and yield nice result.

I would like to encourage other macro and closeup photographers to post their focus stacked images here and talk about their technics and experiences.

Please welcome to add your stacked photos to the thread. It can of course be of any subject.

Here is one of my first attempts. It is done manually using a bellows system. I use the railing on the bellows to change the focus for each shot (7 shots). So the focus change between the shots were not set precisley but only using my own personal judgement. It seems having worked well. I only missed to take a focused shot of the lower right corner. What do you think?

A simple four shot stack.

Nice pictures Rick. I particualry like the second one. I guess, depending on the devices/methods used, the important questin is how many pictures are needed to cover the area one want to have in focus. Your methods seems to have been based ona precised calculation since I see consistency in focus field.

Thanks,
Actually no calculations were involved in these two. I just watched the manual focus indicators travel up the subject from near camera to far.
Rick

My typical focus stacking setup.

This is my rig. I do most of my stack shots 'in the wild' although I do have a small, table top, 'studio' that I sometimes use.
My flash diffuser looks bad in this shot, I've since stiffened the corners with wooden skewers.

I see you have elaborated your lighting setup. I have so far only experimented with the available light and haven't used flashes yet. I am sure it helps in being able to choose lower ISO's and smaller apertures which in turn gains us more depth of field that is always so vital for macro shots. I hope to see more images of stacked focus shots here.

raminolta wrote in post #18331782
.. I hope to see more images of stacked focus shots here.

Go to the Macro forum. Most images are focus stacked and usually the descriptions point that out. But here are a couple of hand staked images.

If you need to calculate focus distance there are macro calculators on the web.

I normally go to http://extreme-macro.co.uk/ for them. It's also great source of info on stacking.

Thanks for the info and those insect shots are very impressive. I guess the insects must have been dead since normally they don't stay in their place until the stack shots finish, lol.

I have a macro DOF calculator in an Excel spreadsheet that might be of use. You can download it at
https://www.dropbox.co​m …ald%27s%20Optic​s.xls?dl=0

In post #7 you suggest using smaller apertures to gain DOF. That is a useful technique when doing single shots, but it's often not the best when doing stacking. That's because smaller apertures give diffraction softening. So when doing stacking, I open up more as magnification increases, the opposite of conventional wisdom. You should try to keep the effective aperture at approx f/22 or below to avoid too much diffraction. The spreadsheet calculates the effective aperture, and you can also look it up in tables such as found in the lens instruction manuals.

raminolta wrote in post #18333618
Thanks for the info and those insect shots are very impressive. I guess the insects must have been dead since normally they don't stay in their place until the stack shots finish, lol.

Dead insects look, well, dead. I shoot live only. Many critters will hold still especially early in the morning when they are a bit cold. It's a challenge but can be done.

The ones on that site are. However I occassionally get some handheld stacks in the field. Brian LordV does lots and is amazing at it. As are some others.

Yes the reason for stacking is to increase the DOF througout the shot. So shooting wider is best. But you can still use stacking for higher f numbers. Some of mine in field are F11 just as am shooting at that generally.