Early Attempt at Focus Stacking

Howdy All,

I took a series of 18 shots (T2i/100mm macro L), looking down the wall at a ~45 degree angle, to have something to experiment with in CombineZP. I took a stab at settings using an iso of 100, Av mode f/8 (very shallow DOF), which left the shutter at mostly 1/25th. I had to look back at the exif to remember that I used the built-in flash. The 45 degree angle allowed the wings to be more than just a slit in the image as they would have been if shot straight-on. I suspect that maybe f/11 or even more, and fewer shots might have been the better way to go. Processing artifacts are very visible around the legs and even parts of the wall have some funny mirror image reflections towards the bottom. I remember someone here mentioning how stacking tends to "flatten" the image. That is sure obvious here. At least it was a good opportunity to demonstrate to my wife just how slow (many minutes) my PC is when under intensive processing .

I've generally only found those mirror-image sections at the edges of stacks, which usually made it fairly easy to crop them out. I'd like to see a couple of the original shots, to get a feel for how shallow the DOF really was...

Looks like a good to me.

archer1960 wrote in post #11150520
...I'd like to see a couple of the original shots, to get a feel for how shallow the DOF really was...

Howdy Archer,

Here is a shot that is about mid-stack :

Howdy,

Here's another one that I did around the same timeframe. The stack shots were taken at a 45 degree angle. Once again, it does tend to flatten-out an image. It was 12 shots at f/13, iso 100, 2.5sec shutter. It is of a House Centipede that I found, here else?, in my house (in the kitchen sink) :

The mid-stack shot

Both stacks came out pretty well !
THe distortion round the edge in #1 is the stacking border caused by the changing FOV- as commented you just need to crop it off. You can minimise it by reversing the stack assuming the last shot is the nearest to the subject.
Yes doing a full stack of the subject does tend to remove some of the visual clues we use to gauge depth in a 2-D photo but is wonderful with a 3-D pair of shots.
Brian V.

Howdy Brian,

Thanks for the feedback! I'll experiment with those ideas. I just saw your link to your "Macrophotography by LordV" thread at the bottom of your post. Wow! I've got some reading/studying/exper​imenting to do. Good thing I scheduled vacation time for this Monday and Tuesday . Your camera/flash setup reminded me that I've been meaning to get a cable and flash mount for my 430EX so that I can get it off the top of the camera. (3-D... I'll have to try that real soon...)

the stacks worked well

the partial mid stack looks much nicer than the full stack, more realistic

phil

Your second stack is especially interesting, thanks for sharing.

good work, stacks turn out good

Very nice shots and stacks!

Howdy All,

Thanks for the coments everyone. I'll have to try some more experimenting with different levels of stacking next time.

I tried focus stacking for the first time today. I did a 13 frame stack of a model railroad locomotive.

This is the close focus image:

Lovely stack John - worked very well !
Brian v.

For the tiny bug shots, are you guys using a focus rail, or adjusting focus to create the stack? My 100mm f2.8 macro changes image size with focus adjustment, and although Auto align layers is good, I'm thinking a focus rail would make life easier.

How do you keep the bugs under control? Do you just hope they hang around, or are they incapacitated somehow?