Two more Focus Stacks

[lightshipman]

Just another couple of focus stacks, trial and error thingy, trying new methods and fine tuning.

May stack 17 by Andrew Wright, on Flickr

Stack exp correct first by Andrew Wright, on Flickr

 

[Kodiak Qc]

•


May I suggest that you set the first take a few mm before and
after the last as well so to exclude some errors.

There is a ghosting issue that should be easy to resolve.

Cool colours and tonal ratios!

 

[GardenersHelper]

That is a lovely and fascinating flower Andrew.

As to the halos, we had a discussion about that in this thread in January. Since then I've done some more work on the issues. I don't recall writing this up here, but I may have, so please forgive me if what follows is old news. You might want to have a look at this post at dpreview (and perhaps the rest of the thread it is in). I've also done a You Tube video about the issues and some ways of addressing them.

 

[lightshipman]

•


May I suggest that you set the first take a few mm before and
after the last as well so to exclude some errors.

There is a ghosting issue that should be easy to resolve.

Cool colours and tonal ratios!

I have tried to focus at the furthest extremity of the flower in the first image I took, which gave very fine detail of the rear of the flower right in the triangular part between the petals, this did not show up in the final stack, so some detail does seem to get lost, I then took the series of images working to the nearest point of the flower, which in the final image I was focusing on the nearest point of the flowers 'tongues'. I am using Affinity Pro, and have not tried other programs as I really want to master Aff.. Pro before confusing myself with other programs. I will try again as you suggest trying to focus further back and then further forward. I do like the results from stacking even though I have a lot still to learn.

 

[Kodiak Qc]

•

I like AP as well and it replaces the other software
but I don't use it for any kind of stacking as I star-
ted to use a dedicated stacking software before it
came on the market.

I sure you'll get to the results you want Andrew!

 

[lightshipman]

Nick, I found the halos we talked about before quite obvious in these images, I don't know if it me, but as I focus for the different images, the subject seems to be marginally smaller, so is this what is causing the halo or ghosting effect as the image is rendered. I took a long time getting the focus spot on taking these images, making sure they are correct, what about the out of focus fuzziness, when you are focussing deeper into the flower, the outside edge petals are massively out of focus. I will try to have another watch of your video when I am not so busy with work.

 

[lightshipman]

•

I like AP as well and it replaces the other software
but I don't use it for any kind of stacking as I star-
ted to use a dedicated stacking software before it
came on the market.

I sure you'll get to the results you want Andrew!

It's getting the time to sit down, I use a computer a lot in work for seabed surveys, and I feel quite 'head fried' sometimes when I get home, so I then don't tend to do things at home in the evening which tax me so to speak.

 

[GardenersHelper]

Nick, I found the halos we talked about before quite obvious in these images, I don't know if it me, but as I focus for the different images, the subject seems to be marginally smaller, so is this what is causing the halo or ghosting effect as the image is rendered. I took a long time getting the focus spot on taking these images, making sure they are correct, what about the out of focus fuzziness, when you are focussing deeper into the flower, the outside edge petals are massively out of focus. I will try to have another watch of your video when I am not so busy with work.

Yes, there are issues with things getting larger as they go out of focus. I discuss that at 22:00 to about 23:45 in the video I linked to. That is the cause of some halos. Some have other causes - sometimes it is caused by the stacking method. In the video from 15:40 to about 19:45 I show how different methods can have different looking halos, or sometimes no halo at all. Different methods can also cause different amounts of noise and/or other artefacts, including posterisation, in plain backgrounds.