First Attempt At Stacking

RogersDA

6 Images. Manually selected alignment points before stacking.
Images were converted from raw to jpg and the stack processed.
Result is uncropped and unedited.
Still a lot of halos and noise. I may need to eliminate one of the images from the stack.

EDIT:
Dropped two of the first images in the stack. They had sharper backgrounds, but the bokeh on the foreground was probably too much.
Did not manually align the stack this time.

Each shot was with the MP-E65 @1x, tripod + rail, natural light. 1/8 sec., f/11, ISO200


EDIT: Image Removed. See my galleries for images.

Skippy

RogersDA wrote:

6 Images. Manually selected alignment points before stacking.
Images were converted from raw to jpg and the stack processed.
Result is uncropped and unedited.
Still a lot of halos and noise. I may need to eliminate one of the images from the stack.

EDIT:
Dropped two of the first images in the stack. They had sharper backgrounds, but the bokeh on the foreground was probably too much.
Did not manually align the stack this time.

Each shot was with the MP-E65 @1x, tripod + rail, natural light. 1/8 sec., f/11, ISO200

Hi there David, I like that second Edit
When you look at the image makes you wonder why the water just
doesn't fall through the gaps, but then you remember its MACRO,
and not as big as it appears on the screen.

The images reminds me of a Cone Shell from the beach
... Skippy
.

Lord Vetinari

Looks like it worked it well esp in #2
Brian V.

RogersDA

Skippy wrote:

Hi there David, I like that second Edit
When you look at the image makes you wonder why the water just
doesn't fall through the gaps, but then you remember its MACRO,
and not as big as it appears on the screen.

The images reminds me of a Cone Shell from the beach
... Skippy
.

This stacking thing is kind of cool.

Brian, of course, makes everything look so much better and easier. There is no way I could have done this without a rail on the tripod.

RogersDA

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Looks like it worked it well esp in #2
Brian V.

Do you find that there is a limit to the number of images that can be stacked? It appears to me that the 6 I chose for the first attempt had too much variance in the range of DOF; i.e., the first two images had the large loop portion of the tendril in focus, but that caused the foreground for those images to be completely OOF, especially at f/11.

I am not sure how the CombineZM software works to handle such a range.

Llywellyn

Wow, I got nowhere near this good a result when I first attempted stacking. Kudos! The second edit looks fantastic. I can really feel that drop being squeezed.

RogersDA

Llywellyn wrote:

Wow, I got nowhere near this good a result when I first attempted stacking. Kudos! The second edit looks fantastic. I can really feel that drop being squeezed.

Thanks for the comments, Llywellyn. I am still amazed that Brian can do this with bugs and essentially handholding the camera. I was able to do this only because I used a rail and there was virtually no wind outside.

Lord Vetinari

RogersDA wrote:

Do you find that there is a limit to the number of images that can be stacked? It appears to me that the 6 I chose for the first attempt had too much variance in the range of DOF; i.e., the first two images had the large loop portion of the tendril in focus, but that caused the foreground for those images to be completely OOF, especially at f/11.

I am not sure how the CombineZM software works to handle such a range.

Hi David,
I've never tried to find a limit, think the most I have ever stacked just as a trial was 16 shots (it was the face of a coin but shot at a very low angle. I suspect the limit may be your patience and the amount of memory in the Pc. I know someone who does focus stacking on cacti who regularly uses around 100 pics but they do use Helicon focus (not sure if it make a difference). I go upto about 10 shots fairly frequently on complex dewdrop groups.

Brian V.

Awais Yaqub

Very nice and clear