This thing bloomed for the first time this week. This is my feeble attempt are a focus merge of 13 RAW pics using Affinity Photo's focus merge function.

Panasonic GX8
Olymupus 60mm f2.8

opening the image in a new tab gets you the bigger image, looks really good! Have not tried that function yet. hmmm. I tend to get lost in the blur, but this has a great mix.

Wait, WHAT?! Ace, that looks surreal and gorgeous. Okay, I'm gonna try focus stacking a bird of paradise flower we have in our front yard tonight. Andy tells me my Nikon does auto focus stacking somehow.

Here's the lame iPhone portrait-mode shot I just took of the subject. We'll see how the focus-stacked version compares tonight.

Alright. Here's one stacked from the side

using different f-stop to get the focus points?

I set the camera on manual and refocused on each shot. The second picture was a stack of a dozen shots.

Huh. The weather got cloudy but I went into the front yard and took a photo of this rose at f/16. I didn't do any adjustments.

Then I set my camera to auto acquire images in focus stack mode and shot 9 frames at f/4. I used Photoshop to then to take those 9 frames and blend them together to one focus-stacked image. I have never done this before.

The big difference seems to be the background is more out of focus with the focus-stacked image. It's a little darker, but that's just my manual exposure setting not being quite the same.

What do you think?

Then I did another experiment. I shot these flowers at f/16. They're spaced much deeper so not possible to get them all in focus without focus stacking.

Then I let the camera do it's thing for 10 frames and combined them, also at f/16. I didn't think this would work because the wind was blowing them back and forth.

Which shot do you prefer?

Then I went to the bird of paradise. This is what it looks like at f/4:

f/16:

Focus-stacked after being shot at f/4 (7 frames). What do you think?

I like a little bokeh.

Nice. I'm with Ian about the bokeh. In pics shot at f16, the background is a bit distracting. The subject detail on the stacked photos are as good as the f16 shots without the background. In Affinity Photo you can take the stack and select a preferred frame to be the primary source for a section of the final image. I'm thinking PS or LR does the same thing. If you have a final image that has too much detail, you can paint the area with the selected out-of-focus frame. Works great.

BUT, those were done in camera. I really like that.

This is so cool. I understand almost none of it. Where can a noob learn??

https://vimeo.com/192632707

https://vimeo.com/192632435

the first flower faded. The other two emerged.

I think manual stacking is the way to go - unless you want to enjoy the result of mindlessness run through a machine.

Hahaha, okay, fair enough. 😁Boarding a plane to NY, surely I'll be able to find something there to focus stack manually.