Practicing the craft : Focus stacking, purple flower

[JBW]

[JohnRostron]

A beautiful image. I have to ask: what stacking method did you use,, focus or rail? And what stacking algorithm, pyramid, Dmap or what. These things do seem to make a difference, especially with the background.

John

[Dave Humphries]

A very good result Brian, (and much better subject to test/demo stacking on), but you gotta 'spill the beans' on the shooting (at least aperture and how many shots) and post processing method.

Cheers,
Dave

[madcrow]

Fabulous work. All that practice is paying off.

[Geoff F]

Yes, good clarity on the flower and a nicely subdued background.

[joebranko]

Very nice image. Look forward to learning how you did it

[JBW]

A very good result Brian, (and much better subject to test/demo stacking on), but you gotta 'spill the beans' on the shooting (at least aperture and how many shots) and post processing method.

Cheers,
Dave

Hmmm, I am still not overly happy with this result but as I am in a minority (though later today if I can i will process this shot without focus stacking and see how it compares) for all who are interested here's how it was achieved...

The flower was shot from the tripod in natural light at a distance of about 1 meter. I took multiple shots and angles and found 3 that lined up well enough for stacking. (at 400mag the crosshairs all hit the same spot)

#1: ISO 100, 1/4s, F/16
#2: ISO 100, 0.2s, F/16
#3: ISO 100, 1/1.6s, F/16

Once I was in Capture 1 Sony pro I loaded all three onto the screen and applied some universal adjustments:
crop
resize
colour balance
film grain
chromatic aberration
tone enhancement in B&W
exposure
spot removal
cloning
healing

From there I treated each one individually by applying masks and adjusting various areas.
exposure, clarity, structure, brightness, noise reduction, sharpening

Then I exported and stacked in Zerene (free trial version).

Back into Capt. 1 SP with the stack.

I cloned the new shot so that I could make fine adjustments to flower and background, created B&W for both clones and exported them into Gimp.

In Gimp:
depth merge
levels
cloning
unsharpen mask

That's basically it.

Now I have read that I need a way to move my camera or to move the subject but I have found that outdoors the changing light changes where my camera focuses. Inside or outside I can also put the focus onto individual areas simply by a push of the appropriate button.

I must admit to an almost total ignorance of the finer details for focus stacking but time can cure ignorance.

I have undoubtedly missed a few details but this is basically what I did. Oh yes i paid special attention to cleaning up the blossom.

[Geoff F]

For outdoor real life shooting I tend to manually focus on the closest spot for the first shot then just change my focus until something suitable in the mid distance becomes sharp. After which, try another shot further back, but subject movement can often spoil the third shot. Always worth trying though and sometimes a three focus stack works well.

For carefully controlled studio type shooting it is possible to take multiple shots at fixed distances using a slide on the tripod, or subject.

[JBW]

For outdoor real life shooting I tend to manually focus on the closest spot for the first shot then just change my focus until something suitable in the mid distance becomes sharp. After which, try another shot further back, but subject movement can often spoil the third shot. Always worth trying though and sometimes a three focus stack works well.

For carefully controlled studio type shooting it is possible to take multiple shots at fixed distances using a slide on the tripod, or subject.

Our solarium is coming along. When it is complete plants and bugs in a semi controlled environment and a rail or bellows just might make sense.

[Wavelength]

Lovely