First Attempt at Focus Stacking! C&C

[sm4him]

Recently, I posted some photos of a passionflower. Some of the comments led me to decide it was time to do something that scares me...try focus stacking!

Why does focus stacking scare me?? I don't know...because it's new to me. Because it requires not just getting the shot, but getting the shot over and over again, and then learning how to process it. But mostly, it's new...and new scares me.

So, here's my first ever attempt at focus stacking. Not looking for C&C on the subject or the composition, just on the focus stacking.

I used a tiny, tiny little feather I'd found this weekend; my macro lens (Tokina 100mm) and ocf. 25 exposures, stacked and aligned basically by using the "recipe" in Tony Northrup's video that was posted in my passionflower thread. I used PS for the processing part.

Comments? Suggestions? Does it look okay--did I miss parts and get any banding? I already know I didn't quite get the front end of the feather, I messed up and had it a little too close to the lens to get focus on it.

What else do I need to know about focus stacking before I try again?

 

[Overread]

Thoughts and things to look for

1) Missed frames - always when processing keep an eye out for if you've missed a frame; you'll see it as appearing like the photo has two (or more) separate depths of field. Small size can sometimes hide this, but blow it up and study the shot once its stacked to keep an eye out for them.

2) Banding - minor wind or motion can cause banding around small details where you'll get an odd shadow appear like motion blur where something has moved from one frame to the next. Depending on the scale of the effect you can fix this, but it can take a while with the clone and heal tools.

3) Focus stacking doesn't have to include the whole of the frame in focus, you can still have parts out of focus at the fore and background.

Also consider that there are different aperture theories with focus stacking:

a) Easy - use a small aperture like f8, f10 etc... that gives you good sharpness with good depth of field. This is a good idea when shooting them handheld or in more grab-shot conditions since it gives you a wider depth of field for a safety net against missing frames.

b) Wide aperture - gives the sharpest result and the most strong background blurring; but of course comes with the need for lots more frames and thus an increased chance of missing a frame (with far less safety net because the depth of field is very small).

c) With option b its often the case that you'll get a very sharp line where the in-focus and out of focus meet. This can make the photo appear odd as the slip into out of focus happens very suddenly. A work around is to use a smaller aperture for the first few and last few photos, so that you re-create that feeling of the depth of field easing from in focus to out of focus.



And your wet feather looks good

 

[480sparky]

Ya dun good, girl!

 

[sm4him]

Thanks, sparky and Overread!

Some really good tips, Overread, thanks.

It was kinda more fun than I expected it to be--I'll definitely be working on this some more, as soon as I can find some suitable subjects.

 

[cgipson1]

Looks nice, Sharon.. especially for a first effort! Fun, huh? lol!

 

[12sndsgood]

Looks pretty good, i'd be happy if my first attempt came out like this.