Post your focus stacking photos here

[RePete42]

I've been struggling a bit with the D850's built in stacking function. This is my latest attempt with a 60mm AF-S micro Nikkor.
Distance from front element of lens to near point of orchid (the chin) was 225mm, aperture F6.3, focus step width 5, (the depth of subject actually obtained in focus was 170mm.)
ISO 200, natural light. 20 shots basic JPEG using silent shutter processed in Affinity.
The next step is to try and build a database of camera settings to calibrate the thing so that I can know exactly what to set in order to get the required depth of sharp focus............gonna take some time.




RePete

 

[Robin W]

Decided I needed to shoot these using more images. Lots of folks are using between 50 and 100, which seems excessive to me. I took this one using 20 images and increased the distance between shots. It was shot at F11, using flash. I should have either increased the number of shots a little, or increased the distance between shots as the very back of the leaf was out of focus. I think I had it on 7 out of 10. I got none of the bands that indicate gaps of DOF between shots.

While the concept is simple, the execution of this technique has it's difficulties. Wind is not your friend when shooting these, as I found out. It also creates some large files when editing. I wish I could directly import the files from LR to PS for stacking, but the cloud version doesn't allow them to be exported as separate layers, unless I'm missing something. I would like to edit in LR, then copy edit parameters to all images, then import directly into PS. Currently, I'm importing the unedited images directly into PS, then auto aligning and auto blending them, and exporting it to do final editing in LR. That seems a little clumsy to me, and I can't export the final image as a TIF with this many images stacked, as the file is too large. I have to export as a JPG, which caused me issues with artifacts created in the background when editing.

View attachment 394704

You did a beautiful job. I have found that problem too, that the files won't transfer from lightroom to photoshop when there are many. I just haven't found the time to figure it out.