Tried Focus Stacking How'd I do?

gluwater

My first attempt at Focus stacking. This is a stack of three shots, all being handheld. What do you think.



Thanks for the info on doing this Brian. You are the King of Macro. Let me know what you think.

Lord Vetinari

Hi, Nick.

That looks as if it has worked extremely well. More than just the head in focus .
Looks as if it has the right number of legs etc (you can end up with too many if it moves one during the shoot).
Extremely good example in fact because of the angle of the shot.
When shooting bugs I tend to shoot say 3 shots just to make sure one is in focus!- now when I do it I try to "focus bracket" them- that way I nearly always get at least one good shot but often have enough to focus stack them.
Just noticed you have slight stacking errors borders on the top and RHS (where it looks as if there is a mirror reflection)- just need to crop slightly.
There is also a slight halo under the head that needs to be cloned out- but all very minor- I get these slight errors in my shots- just need to look out for them by carefully comparing the stack with the originals.
Congrats
Brian V.

gluwater

Yeah, i noticed the top mirror after I had posted it. The bottom had a large mirror image I already cropped, and now that I look closer the left and right edges have a mirror image also. I also noticed a halo where the body meets the wings, but I did not notice the halo under the head, thanks for ointing it out. These are things I'm not used to looking for but will have to be conscious about when stacking. Thanks for the input Brian, I used the software you had mentioned CombineZ5 and it works pretty well and easily. Preying Mantis are a good subject for this I think because of how still they sit.

Lord Vetinari

I've tried another commercial stacking software (helicon 3.0) and it did not seem to work as well as combinez5.

The only other thing I can add, is that I sometimes do directly copy/paste bits from the original to the stack where the stacking software makes a slight mess of things- but that is just little bits.
Brian V.