Following Johns suggestion, I tried my hand at focus stacking with the Amaryllis. You're looking at the stamen of one of the flowers. This is my third stack ever, so any suggestions for improvement are very welcome. At close inspection (at 100%) I already saw that I missed out on a few spots in the focus range....
D7000, 200mm micro, tripod, remote w. MUP, ISO-100, f/7.1, 1/200 sec, +1.3 EV.
ACR/CS6, stack of 6 images, stacked using the photomerge and autoblend functions in CS6.
Very nice!! And wonderful soft colors. I think I'd like to see it with a little more crispness in the details.
For stacking situations where you're trying for a lot of DOF, most programs will give you smeared-out areas around some features, called overlap halos (too hard to try to explain here but you'll know it if you see it). If that's a problem, Zerene Stacker is the miracle answer, designed for high-end super macro stuff. Use the "PMax" setting.
Hi Jerry. Very cool selective focus and I like the comp. I'm not familiar with this flower, but I'm wondering if the pinks and yellows are a little overexposed? You might try darkening the image just a bit to see if it helps. I'm also a fan of Zerene Stacker. It's easy to use - though I haven't used it enough to learn all the intricacies yet.
Thanks for suggesting a good stacking program. I'll definately look into it. I don't think that overlap halos are a problem here. At a 100% I can actually count individual pollen grains, so it's quite sharp. I missed a few spots in the focus range (visible on the center of the left most stamen as well as the upper centred one) and I held back on contrast/clarity to add 'crispyness', because it emphasized the shadows on the top left too much.
I know that the effect you describe happens at even larger magnifications with my lens. It doesn't have internal focussing, which means that I get shifts in perspective because the lens moves inwards and outwards when changin the focus. Often the effect is so strong that I can't even get the images aligned correctly. I kept more distance on this image to avoid this, you're looking at about a 50% crop here.
All the programs I've used deal well with the subject changing is size as you change focus -- by re-sizing and aligning the layers. The overlap halos are different and only Zerene deals with them, in my experience.
This is a lovely idea -- I'd love to see more of this subject!
Forgot to respond to Steve's critique on the pinks and yellows. They're not overexposed, but I did increase their saturation a bit to get a more colorful picture, but within the ranges of what I would consider to look natural (but obviously, you don't think so ). The colors on the flower were a bit flat to begin with, which was further emphasized by the light I had en the exposure I had to work with because of the bright whites in the BG.
I pulled the image into PS and see that it doesn't have an embedded profile. Although it's increasingly rare these days, some browsers may not interpret the colors correctly. It does appear to have been converted to sRGB, but embedding the profile is still an important step.
I put a sticky at the top of the ETL forum with some explanation.
Thanks Diane, for noticing this. I have the box 'embed profile' ticked as a standard option in 'Save for web', but I recently upgraded to CS6 and probably forgot to tick the box then.
No surprise that I like this one, Jerry, as I'm a fan of shallow DOF detail-oriented macro work. Dig the curving lines flowing down then up into the BG, becoming progressively OOF as they go. I, too, have ZS, tho I have only done a few stacks to date. The ZS website has some good tutorial videos.
Hi Jerry... I think this is so beautiful... excellent comp and subject photographed... would maybe selective sharpen the stamina tops... and yes I would as per Steve slightly add a bit of contrast to the shot... otherwise a wonderful effort!
More Amaryllis
). The colors on the flower were a bit flat to begin with, which was further emphasized by the light I had en the exposure I had to work with because of the bright whites in the BG.
Jerry van Dijk thanked for this post
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