[toni-a]

I read about focus stacking lately, personally didn't find it that appealing in concept, anyone tried it ? Anyone knows the technique to do it ?

[stoppingdown]

Appealing, it's appealing... For instance, when you deal with flowers and you want to have a sharp subject with a well blurred background, either you have to trade off with aperture (full open means excellent background, but most flowers won't be fully in the DoF; stopping down enough to have the DoF covering the whole flower makes the bokeh worse) or you really need to find a subject with very strong physical separation from the background (with some species, it's just impossible).

 

With focus stacking, instead, you can shoot several photos at or near maximum aperture, moving each time the DoF from the closest parts of the flower to the farthest. Then a software will merge them, picking the sharpest parts from each shot.

 

I think you need the tripod. While other kinds of image stacking work without a tripod (e.g. sticking panoramas or HDR), as they are capable to pre-align the various shots before merging them, I think that this attempt is unlikely to work fine with focus stacking, because there are a few sharp parts that the various shots have in common and the algorithm can use as reference points. At least this is my very very limited experience so far.

 

I think that Adobe Creative Suite has support for focus stacking - that is, for post-processing shots taken with this approach.

 

Since I'm a lazy guy, I don't want to do anything outside Lightroom. I found a plugin named LR/Enfuse that is capable to do the job (it can do various kinds of merging, including HDR - BTW, it offers an HDR that in some cases produces results "more natural" than the embedded LR support). The problem is that is very "raw" from the user interface point of view, in the sense that you need to set a quantity of numeric parameters that need to be precisely tuned for a good result. There's a manual, but as usual it's a matter of experience. So far I don't have the experience to produce anything good, but I hope sooner or later I'll learn it.

 

OTOH, some cameras have focus stacking support built-in. This means that they also take charge of shifting the focus ring at each shot, which makes the thing much faster. Apart from the fact that faster is better, in some cases it might be also fundamental, if the subject moves (e.g. flowers in the breeze; and insects, as I've seen people using focus stacking with them).

[toni-a]

Appealing, it's appealing... For instance, when you deal with flowers and you want to have a sharp subject with a well blurred background, either you have to trade off with aperture (full open means excellent background, but most flowers won't be fully in the DoF; stopping down enough to have the DoF covering the whole flower makes the bokeh worse) or you really need to find a subject with very strong physical separation from the background (with some species, it's just impossible).


With focus stacking, instead, you can shoot several photos at or near maximum aperture, moving each time the DoF from the closest parts of the flower to the farthest. Then a software will merge them, picking the sharpest parts from each shot.


I think you need the tripod. While other kinds of image stacking work without a tripod (e.g. sticking panoramas or HDR), as they are capable to pre-align the various shots before merging them, I think that this attempt is unlikely to work fine with focus stacking, because there are a few sharp parts that the various shots have in common and the algorithm can use as reference points. At least this is my very very limited experience so far.


I think that Adobe Creative Suite has support for focus stacking - that is, for post-processing shots taken with this approach.


Since I'm a lazy guy, I don't want to do anything outside Lightroom. I found a plugin named LR/Enfuse that is capable to do the job (it can do various kinds of merging, including HDR - BTW, it offers an HDR that in some cases produces results "more natural" than the embedded LR support). The problem is that is very "raw" from the user interface point of view, in the sense that you need to set a quantity of numeric parameters that need to be precisely tuned for a good result. There's a manual, but as usual it's a matter of experience. So far I don't have the experience to produce anything good, but I hope sooner or later I'll learn it.


OTOH, some cameras have focus stacking support built-in. This means that they also take charge of shifting the focus ring at each shot, which makes the thing much faster. Apart from the fact that faster is better, in some cases it might be also fundamental, if the subject moves (e.g. flowers in the breeze; and insects, as I've seen people using focus stacking with them).

You know how it can ne done in PhotoShop?

[davidmanze]

Tap image stacking in utube with PS!

 

  Try this one for starters!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqAXR94X0T8

[stoppingdown]

toni-a, unfortunately, while I suppose that Photoshop has got support for it, I don't know about it. I'm a very infrequent and very basic Photoshop user.

[davidmanze]

Ok, this is my first attempt at focus stacking a jumping spider!

 

 The problem was of course he wanted to do a runner, anyway I only got four shots out of six before he disappeared, unfortunately a couple of his legs got slightly damaged (poor thing)

 

 He moved so I couldn't get the first and last image aligned, so the front leg and his rear are blurred!

 

  He was only 5-6mm long, so minuscule. Stacked in CS6.  

 

  Nothing great, but the principle is tested, I have another spider who is a bit lively, so I'll let him quieten down and try again tomorrow, hopefully I will be able to get a ten stack image.

 

  Shot with the Sigma 150mm macro+ 36mm extension tube at F8 (softens too much at F11) 1/250thy sec.

[davidmanze]

  Here's the video which showed how to stack images in PS:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYA7wb2Vkz8&t=435s

[davidmanze]

  Nikon D500 ...Sigma 150mm EX F2.8 + 36mm extension tube + 12mm extension tube.

 

 

 

Ok Finally got a decent stacked image of one of my favourite spiders, a jumping spider!

 

   Nine images stacked in PS CS6 portable, processed in DNG, then transformed to Jpg.

 

  With flash exposure  3 secs.  (to get enough light to manual focus in LV mode) at F8.

 

   He seems to have 6/8 eyes, two "full beam" front ones, two medium size and two tiny ones + on the side of his head. 

 

 

  The second shot is of a another unknown to me spider, which I have nicknamed the "spiny fruit salad spider"  Only three images stacked here, again flash at F8.

 

  It always amazes me that some of these tiny insects have such an amount of bodily detail and such a tiny lifespan, in nature nothing seems to be too much trouble, no matter how short the existence.

[JJ_SO]

Never tried it at living objects. Gave it up a couple of years ago because it was too much boring technical stuff involved and lots of preparations. These days it became easy, the preps. Less so, to find nice subjects worth the effort. Nice work, dave.

[davidmanze]

  Thanks JoJu!

 

        It's easy as you say these days, although both my CS6s refused to load up the images, some sort of problem code kept coming up, which I researched into and found nothing....I found an old CS6 portable on a key and loaded that into my comp....it worked fine!

 

  As for the poor spider......RIP...I'm afraid!

 

  BTW he measured 7.5mm in length...