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
Cactus Flower Focus Merge
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?
- anonymous user
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??
the first flower faded. The other two emerged.
Hahaha, okay, fair enough. 😁Boarding a plane to NY, surely I'll be able to find something there to focus stack manually.
