Weevil on a windowsill

Lord Vetinari

Weevil- just arrived on a windowsill. Not seen this species of Sitona before.
All have been focus stacked using zerene.
Brian v.

roscowgo

How in the heck do you all get them to hold still for these stacks? Every live bug here hops and flitters around like it's on meth.

Lord Vetinari

roscowgo wrote: »

How in the heck do you all get them to hold still for these stacks? Every live bug here hops and flitters around like it's on meth.

Obviously I don't always end up with compliant bugs. With this one it was a fairly cool day and so it was not moving around much. I think then when you first start shooting the flash actually causes the bug to freeze. I also can shoot short stacks fairly quickly.
Brian v.

roscowgo

Do you close down the aperture to get a deeper dof for fewer pics per stack as well?


*takes notes

Lord Vetinari

roscowgo wrote: »

Do you close down the aperture to get a deeper dof for fewer pics per stack as well?


*takes notes

No I normally shoot stacks at the same aperture I would use for a single shot but I do tend to shoot fairly open.
This is basically because I don't know when I start shooting whether I'm going to be able to take a few shots for stacking.
eg on a 1.6 crop camera 1:1 F11, 2:1 F9,3:1 F7.1.
On a Full frame DSLR you can shut down these values by around 2/3 to 1 stop
Brian V.

roscowgo

That's what I was thinking. I didn't know if people were opening way wide, like down into the 2's and doing stacks of live things with lots of shots, or keeping a middle-small opening and doing fewer, or closing it way down and doing fewer still.

Like this one I think was down around f23 or something.

IPClark

As always, very good shots Brian and excellent info too

roscowgo

Indeed. Ty for the pointers. I really need to get a rail. I'm especially awful bad at doing stacks by hand.

Lord Vetinari

thanks again for the comments
Brian v.

Lord Vetinari

roscowgo wrote: »

That's what I was thinking. I didn't know if people were opening way wide, like down into the 2's and doing stacks of live things with lots of shots, or keeping a middle-small opening and doing fewer, or closing it way down and doing fewer still.

Like this one I think was down around f23 or something.

The problem with shutting down the aperture is running into diffraction. I like to be able to see fine detail in my shots (assuming the subject has any) which is how I arrived at the apertures I use at different magnifications as a reasonable balance of DOF and diffraction. So focus stacking is just a way of getting back some of the DOF and still retain a good level of fine detail.

Brian v.