Solstice Greetings

My annual greeting to the forum.

The background poinsettia was taken on a Canon R7 with a Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro. Of perhaps some interest is that this camera has a focus stacking mode, which I used for this shot. This one is a composite of 10 images (my choice; you could select hundreds.) One shutter press fires up the total in sequence. I used a tripod (obviously).

For stacking the images, you have a choice. The camera can combine them or you can stack them with Canon's Digital Photo Professional. It takes longer in DPP than in the camera. My PC is a rocket with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20GHz and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GPU, with 16GB RAM and 16GB in the GPU. It took a few minutes for DPP to complete the ten-image composition.

I previously would take stacked images by manually changing the focus in separate exposures, then combining them in Photoshop CS5. I compared all three techniques (I let the camera automatically change the focus for the PS composition; I'm not that much of a purist.) I was curious to see if one process won out over the others.

I haven't used DPP at all over the years. I prefer Phase One Capture One Pro for raw processing. I was turned off to DPP way back with the version that I believe came with my 40D. I didn't like the sharpening algorithm. So I didn't have high expectations for the new one. However, the new version did impress me. The focus stacking result was better to my eye than the in-camera composition, but not by much. They both edged out Photoshop, but the PS version was no slouch. Pretty good for a 10 or more year-old program.

One other note: it's generally my habit to sharpen raw images. The in-camera and DPP features both produce a jpeg. The originals were CR3 files. When I pixel-peeped the output before any attempt at sharpening, I was surprised -- and a little disappointed. It was so sharp that dust specks on the poinsettia were visible and glaringly in focus (the disappointment). No sharpening was needed. But I did have to spot clean some of the dust. In the future, I may have to alter my routine to include a feather duster!

One other thing: the composite image does not appear to contain EXIF data, although it's possible that the forum might be at fault. I manually entered some of it, but the R7 does not appear in the forum's gear list. Anti-APS-C bias?