Lichen detail

Dutch name: Korstmos

comments (3)

Ferdy Christant

Lion

Wow, that's a major closeup. Focus stacking? Posted 12 years ago
1. Joost Thissen
  
  Lion
  
  No, F/11 with use of a tripod and manual focusing. I regard this as best achievable result without focus stacking. With smaller apertures then F/11 (e.g. F/16) the sharpness becomes noticeable less. I am thinking about trying focus stacking because even at this best possible aperture I still find the dof to be insufficient.
  
  Anyone now a good program for focus stacking? I heard that Zerene stacker is good? Posted 12 years ago, modified 12 years ago
2. 1. Ferdy Christant
    
    Lion
    
    Photoshop has better possibilities than you might think. You can load several images as layers and auto-align them. After that you can blend them based on sharpness, a process that is mostly automatic. I hear it only works well for certain images though.
    
    Other alternatives are Helicon Focus and Enfuse.
    
    I don't say this from experience, I've never done focus stacking in my life. I happen to come across this in Focus magazine, a photography magazine. In the tutorial it is also confirmed that sometimes even at F11 or F22 you cannot get enough DOF and indeed focus stacking is the only option.
    
    Personally, I avoid focus stacking where I can. It's only needed at extreme magnifications. For a normal macro magnification, I tend to simply take a small step back so that all is in focus. If you do that and the photo is very sharp, you can crop into a larger magnification during processing. Posted 12 years ago