focus stacked flowers

[rdking647]

i had read about focus stcking but had never actually done it. today i went to the botanic garden to give it a try

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I have no idea what focus stacking is, but I sure love your results!

How do you do it?

These are wonderful!

[rdking647]

2. your combing multiple shots with different focus points

the idea is do take a macro photo that is sharp over the entire flower. usually part of the flower will be in focus and part not,unless you use a real small aperture which means a long exposure time and or high iso. this way you can use slower iso's and shoot at maximum sharpness.

1. wait for a calm day
2. set up a camera on a tripod. i used a macro lens for these.
3. focus on one edge of the flower. i used manual focus and live view on my camera,magnifying the view to get maximum sharpness.
4. take a shot. i used a remote shutter and a 10 sec delay to minimize camera shake.
5. move the focus point to another are of the flower. your just changing teh in focus part,not what the camera is aimed at
6. take another shot
7 repeat 5 and 6 until the entire flower has been shot in focus. i used between 3 and 7 shots for these

now come the photoshop work

open the photos as separate layers in photoshop.
select all the layers and auto align in the edit menu. use auto projection
next select auto blend layers . use stack images as the method

after all the processing is done you may need to edit the edges depending on how calm it was when you took the original shots

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. Wow! My mind boggles.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. You can also get focus stacking software that automates the whole process.

Google "focus stacking software" for a good selection of them.

Here's an example from the "Helicon Focus" web site:



And here's one I found on Flickr, with illustrated explanation:

https://flic.kr/p/d2Ueww

[rdking647]

7. i knew there was software out there

i wanted to try it without buying anything else.

[Sherman A1]

4. Interesting

I really like the flower shots, not sure on the focus stacking, but it is interesting to try different things.

[alfredo]

6. Beautiful.

I widen my DOF by using a telephoto zoom lens and extension tubes. It isn't as good as your results, but the best solution for handheld shots.