A photostacking lesson

[Overread]

Well I went out and had another go at stacking photos; this time around I was going to use a much wider aperture, so rather than sit at f16 or greater I used f5 with the intention of stacking together a series of shots to get a greater depth shot, whilst retaining a good blurred background.
However I discovered that you really need totally still weather for this kind of work, as any movement on part of subject (or indeed camera) can throw the shots out of sync and then it takgs ages to get a result which might not even work well. I don't think this worked as well as it could have - you can see on the left and right of the shot where there was a poor merger between 3 shots to get the depth right and also where there was a gap in the depths of field.

Taken with Canon 400D and sigma 70-200mm f4-5.6 DG macro

at: f5, ISO 200, 1/200 sec
larger:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3325/3234437561_c07eaa84dd_o.jpg
a fun edit that I think hides the inperfections a little better:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3514/3234438031_4a09b5d22f_o.jpg

any thoughts?

 

[DeadEye]

Overall it looks pretty darn good to me. Well done! Please explain how the stacking merge is done.

Thank You Dead Eye

 

[Overread]

Thanks for the complitments DeadEye!
I'm no expert at it, but I will put together a blog page showing it at some point very soon
Till then I gave a brief description in this thread - with a better example:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=127146
scroll down a bit to find where I explain the basics (I don't know much more than that anyway

 

[Bifurcator]

Followed here from you tracker post: http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1282598&postcount=2

I don't get it though. Why stack at all if you have a 200mm zoom? Why not just stand about 1 meter away and shoot it in non-macro mode? It's gong to be nearly the same results but you won't get the OOF areas in between the sharp areas. I dunno, I suppose it's good practice and all - I was just thinking out loud.

 

[Overread]

well if I stack I can help keep the blurred background which tends to get lost in other methods - plus as you say it is good practice and I want to try this on insects with the proper macro lens - so I thought I would try it on some subjects that would not be flying away

 

[lextalionis]

I like the results...nice final picture!

-Roy

 

[Rachelsne]

I like it, and the colours are so vibrant too

 

[tpe]

It really amazes me you can get anything nearly so good like this, as you say it is really difficult to get rid of movement, that is why generally i only try if there is NO wind or i have clamped the subject and the camera in several places.

Here is a breif explanation of stacking and where to get the free software to do it with...

http://www.scientificillustration.net/focus_stacking.html

hth

tim