curiousphil
Super Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2013
- Location
- London, Ontario
Anyone here tried it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_stacking
CanadaCorals.com link said:I don't see a practical purpose for focus stacking when taking pictures of corals while using a tripod.
You can adjust your depth of field on your camera quite easily to get everything in focus or just a small portion of the coral if you want to blur the background.
To echo what everybody already said above, I really don't see the point of focus stacking in relation to coral photography. For macro photography as Bece13 stated for super small subjects, and very high powered macro lenses (i.e. the Canon MP-E 65), the depth of field is razor thin and you need rails, flash or flashes, and stacking. For most of us with a standard macro lens, and fish/coral for a subject, it is just way easier to use a sturdy tripod, a longer shutter speed, and a higher f-stop number (smaller aperture) to get an image with more of the subject in focus. Just make sure all pumps are off to prevent any motion in your coral subjects due account for the longer shutter time.
At high magnification you cannot use aperture to gain depth of field because the light will hit the point of refraction. If anyone cares....lol
Yes, you need lots of light and sometimes is hard to bring enough light to those small objects and you need to use the smaller F stop and high ISO up to the point were the noise is not a problem.
Focus stacking is basically another tool (like external flash or filters for other cases) in combination with aperture, speed, and ISO that you can use to get a proper exposure in very special conditions that cannot be achieved otherwise. A FF body like Nikon D800 (sorry I'm a Nikon guy - lol) with it's huge 36.3 megapixel resolution can help you crop a lot (another tool) that can be used.
Just opened my appetite for some macro snow flakes pictures. Hopefully I will do it this winter as I postpone it for quite a while.
By the way, nice pictures Jordan you have on flickr (got the link from another post).