1/3 of an iris

[Jerry van Dijk]

My first focus stack. Unfortunately not perfect, due to my lack of experience and the windy shooting conditions in my backyard. The first image of the series (sharp on the edge of the lower leaf) wouldn't fit the rest and I missed one part for the stack (just below the yellow area). Also, there are some minor alignment errors from the automated merging process.
Any advice and comments welcome!

D7000, Nikkor 200mm f/4 Micro with Nikon PN-11 extender (52mm), tripod, ISO-100, f/10, 1/60, EV -0.7.
Minor PP in ACR6.7, 9 images, stacked in CS5.

[Diane Miller]

The stacking part looks great to me! Windy conditions make stacks just about impossible. Great job!

I'd like to see more detail in the yellow area -- it looks blown out.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks Diane. The yellow part is indeed blown out. I wasn't able to fix it properly and decided to leave it as is, bacause there were hardly any details in it anyway.

[Bob Miller]

Jerry....I too think your stacking looks good. I don't have much experience with this technique but thats going to change after seeing your image. The yellow throat does look blown out...Have you tried a multiply blend mode followed by some masking ?

[Jonathan Ashton]

The stacking looks good to me too, the black background works too, Bob makes a good suggestion, as an alternative the yellows may be recoverable by using the luminance in the raw converter.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks everyone! I'll see if I can recover those yellows after all, using your suggestions. It is especially the red channel that's blown, and I found that tweaking the reds led to significant color change.
Bob, I found that the automated functions in Photoshop makes stacking the images quite easy. I'll see if I can put up a tutorial here somewhere.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Just to be complete:
- I just found out that I didn't use the extender for this one.
- The black BG is shadow from a nearby bush.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jerry. The stacking worked well here as does the dark background. Nice details in the blues/purples, but I agree about the yellows which are often a problem as they blow out very easily. If you are able to recover some detail there, you will have a fine image!