Focus stacked flower macro

Lord Vetinari

Thought this might be of interest. On my daily garden exploration found some tiny flowers on one of my herbaceous perennials. Picked a sprig and rigged up the camera on a macro table on my tripod. Took 8 shots of one flower bunch at different focus depths at 1:1 using the 105mmEX macro lens and flash. Then used the programme combinez5 to combine the in focus bits (it does this automatically). What do you think?
Brian V.

Shots below are untreated first and last shots and then the finalised combined image.

ian408

That's pretty cool.

Ian

pathfinder

ian408 wrote:

That's pretty cool.

Ian

That is very impressive!! Nice work, LV! - I gotta look into this, But it is limited to stationary subjects, right?

Lord Vetinari

pathfinder wrote:

That is very impressive!! Nice work, LV! - I gotta look into this, But it is limited to stationary subjects, right?

Thanks Pathfinder- It was actually someone here that suggested the software.
Yes the subject has to be stationary AFAIK- even then the stacker sometimes makes errors as the subject does effectively move when you focus.
More obvious example here of an 8 legged fly- it moved it's front legs between shots.
Brian V.

Phil U.

That is a really cool trick. I notice a halo around the stem that doesn't appear to be in your "original" shots. Wierd. The end result is really impressive though.

Lord Vetinari

Phil U. wrote:

That is a really cool trick. I notice a halo around the stem that doesn't appear to be in your "original" shots. Wierd. The end result is really impressive though.

Thanks Phil
The halo on the stem is artificial, it was me using the dodge tool in Photoshop as the stem had all but dissappeared in the final image.
Brian V.

Lord Vetinari

Focus stack with reversed lens
Same flower taken with a reversed 50mm lens in front giving approx 2.8:1 Again a stack of 8 pictures.
Brian V.

MuskyDude

Very cool and effective technique Brian, excellent results. Thanks for sharing.



AJ

Higgmeister

Yeah Baby, Nice stack Brian
Beautiful tiny flowers that would most likely go unnoticed were it not for macro. I like the colors and comp. Nicely captured detail.

CombineZ5 does a good job providing that you get all parts of the subject into focus. Brian hit this one on the nose. For those wanting to try this program, the one thing to really watch for is making sure every part you want in focus has a shot that is in focus. If there is an area that falls withing the focus range and is not in focus, you will get a halo around that object. Otherwise, it seems to work great.

Macro is a wonderful world!!
Chris

Lord Vetinari

Higgmeister wrote:

Beautiful tiny flowers that would most likely go unnoticed were it not for macro. I like the colors and comp. Nicely captured detail.

CombineZ5 does a good job providing that you get all parts of the subject into focus. Brian hit this one on the nose. For those wanting to try this program, the one thing to really watch for is making sure every part you want in focus has a shot that is in focus. If there is an area that falls withing the focus range and is not in focus, you will get a halo around that object. Otherwise, it seems to work great.

Macro is a wonderful world!!
Chris

Thanks Chris- It must have been you that pointed the prog out to me (I'm useless at remembering names- old age) so thanks to you.
Brian V.

Higgmeister

Hi Brian,

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Thanks Chris- It must have been you that pointed the prog out to me (I'm useless at remembering names- old age) so thanks to you.
Brian V.

That may have been. I believe it was Danny (NZmacro) who told me about it...and so on, and so on....:D.

I'm glad to see it working for you. I personally like it also.
Chris

Invective

Wow! I learn something new everytime I come here! That is so cool! I'm going to have to try it out sometime! The final product is very cool, really like the colors. And the 8 legged fly is neat too!

John Mueller

Cool stuff
Thanks for sharing.

REECEPHOTO

Nice job as allways.........

Lord Vetinari

Invective wrote:

Wow! I learn something new everytime I come here! That is so cool! I'm going to have to try it out sometime! The final product is very cool, really like the colors. And the 8 legged fly is neat too!

Thanks Invective.
I have used a PS action called paul's Velvia from here http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm to accentuate the colour (supposed to mimick Velvia film).
Brian V.