There are a lot of software options on the market for focus stacking this image was edited with Adobe Photoshop CC. What could be simpler To use the Helicon Focus filter your subjects need to be motionless, but when they are, you can get some great results. This particular image was made with a merge of 21 images.Īfter the images are captured it’s time to process them. The final number of shots depends on how detailed you want your image to be, but keep in mind that the more images you have, the harder it will be to process later on.
Just use the controls of your remote trigger and app to fine-tune the focus for each shot. The best way to capture these images is to start by focusing on the closest area first, then keep shooting, making sure you cover all the focusing length (move focus farther away from the camera with each successive shot). In this particular image the camera was tethered with a computer and a remote shooting app was used to focus the image. This technique is only possible if the camera, and all the elements on the image are perfectly still, so the use of a steady tripod is really important.Īnother important factor is to shoot, and focus without touching the camera. So, sharp focus and deep Depth of Field are impossible to achieve in this image due to optical limitations.Ī great work-around for these limitations is Focus Stacking (also known as Focal Plane Merging, Z-Stacking or Focus Blending), which combines images photographed with different focus distances into one final image with a greater Depth of Field. This lack of detail is due to diffraction, that is the slight bending of light as it passes around the edge of an object giving the photographed image a soft focus effect. On the other hand f/32 gives you more Depth of Field, but it lacks detail overall. Up until relatively recently this has been a creative issue with macro photography. Whether using dedicated macro lenses, taking standard lenses and reversing them or using bellows generally speaking the depth of field is shallow. The magnified image shows you that f/8 has shallow Depth of Field but, because it represents the sweet spot of this lens, it gives you great detail in the focused areas. A common artefact of macro photography is very shallow depth of field. In this particular image f/8 would give you a very shallow Depth of Field, so if you would like to have more then f/32 would seem to be a better choice, right? But if you take a closer look, you will realize it is just not that easy.