bottle fly on an echinacea

paddler4

Found this one in our garden. 50D, 100mm + 36mm tube, f/13, 1/200, ISO 200, flash, monopod. Single shot.

Lord Vetinari

Lovely greenbottle fly capture !

GOLDENORFE

very nice, good body detail

missed eye focus though
time to learn focus stacking
phil

paddler4

Phil,

Actually, I do lots of stacking of tripod shots, but I have not been able to get stable enough hand-held shots for stacking. Working on it.

Dan

basflt

paddler4 wrote: »

Phil,

Actually, I do lots of stacking of tripod shots, but I have not been able to get stable enough hand-held shots for stacking. Working on it.

Dan

me neither
but ,
if you take several shots,
you will have one with eye in focus
copy / paste the eye = manual stacking

paddler4

Ba$--

I do usually take a bunch, so that at least one is in focus, but if the camera moves back and forth too much, wouldn't the size difference make it hard to paste in?

I am going to try a different balance point for the monopod and see if that helps.

BTW, if you go to http://dkoretz.smugmug.com/Other/test-shots/9295844_q6Paq#940202357_KvV9s, you can blow this one up to 1:1. The eye does appear to be in focus--you can see the hexagonal grid pattern. But Phil's point is right regardless: shots like this would be better if stacked.

Dan

GOLDENORFE

the size difference would not be noticable between frames unless you moved half an inch!
copy an in focus eye on a layer then use a layer mask to merge in.

brian does it using clone tool

phil

paddler4

Phil,

Thanks. Very helpful. I'll try it. when you do this with layer masks, do you feather the edge much or leave it hard?

Dan

GOLDENORFE

feather the selection by 50,before copying to layer.
then use a soft brush to mask of the layer edges, reduce opacity to 50% to align layer first. then you can switch between layers to see difference and which parts need hiding under layer mask
phil

paddler4

Phil,

Thanks very much. this is VERY helpful.

Dan

basflt

cloning is usually 1:1
if size bothers better copy / paste as new layer is easier
then you can resize , position , feather whatever you like
[ use opacity slider for exact positioning , and set back to zero before merging ]

Bas

paddler4

Ba$--thanks very much. On my list, if I can just free up a few evenings, is experimenting in detail with this. Your suggestion will help

Dan