Focus stacking

[john.margetts]

A while back, I used my lockdown savings (I am astonished and a bit ashamed at the amount of money I used to spend with little to show for it) to buy a gizmo - I cannot for the life of me think what it is called - that allows you to move the camera by very small amounts. Today I have used it for the first time so I am both trying out the gizmo and also trying out focus stacking with Affinity Photo. Both have exceeded my expectations - I was expecting focus stacking to require a lot more from me.

This is my first attempt , a two inch seashell, which has had no post-processing apart from an increase in contrast. Kit was the said gizmo, Canon 80D and Tamrom 90 mm macro lens. ƒ/8, 1/125 s

 

[john.margetts]

With a bit of sharpening added:

 

[KenBPhoto]

I actually will focus stack by just moving the focus ring. I made a video on how I do it and posted on YouTube here Use a Simple Focus Stacking Technique to Get Tack Sharp Images with Photoshop (2021) - YouTube . I thought it was actually pretty easy. I do some macro but mainly use it in Landscapes. It requires a little more effort in macro since you have small focus fields but it seems to work. I have seen the gizmo though and it looks really interesting. Curious what you think of it. Have you used Photoshop for stacking? How does it compare to Affinity?

 

[Deleted member 89409]

I have used similar techniques: amongst other bodies, I use a Nikon 1 V1 usually with a lens at 35-80mm, manually focussed, and shoot at around f2 at10-15 fps burst at 1/400 for around a couple of seconds whilst pulling focus to scan the focus plane through the object depth and then merge using affinity. It useful in low light ( 10-11 ev say ) and awkward spots where I don’t or can’t use flash and / or my usual dslr macro system.
Cant say I’ve mastered it fully yet but very easy to do macro on the fly without tripods, continuous led or strobes etc.

One of my early posts:

focus stacking from pulled focus burst mode

I am trying various other lenses such as the cheap but adequate Meike 35/1.8 in Nikon 1 mount and stripped out the heavy Mcon's in favour of other achromats like the Nikon 4or 6 T.

I keep meaning to try it on an oly m43 but it has been the Nikon 1 that is my extremely light kit for shoving into cabin bags with the nice long lele that I use all the time on hols: the CX 70-300.

This was an early attempt from that post: