A couple of hand held moth stacks

[davholla]

Possibly better if I had used a tripod and macro rail? Or maybe just more photos or a smaller aperture

Moth hand held stack 8 photos f6.3
Moth EF7A4249 by davholla2002, on Flickr

Handheld Stack 11 photos at f13
Moth EF7A4299 by davholla2002, on Flickr

 

[Steven Dillon]

I'm not a focus stack guru, so I can't exactly say what would/could have helped (I have some of those same questions myself as not many of my focus stack efforts actually come out good enough to keep). But, in the top image, I can see areas that are OOF between areas that are sharp. When I have images that look like that, I wonder if additional stacks would have helped. Then again, I've also had disappointing results with both Photoshop and Helicon Focus where I did have stacks that were in focus, but the software produced an image that didn't render them that way.

I think it's impressive that you held the moth on your finger longer enough to get 8 images! Beyond that, keeping steady that long is also a feat.