Focus Stacking

I focus stack using my Sony A7RIII. Since you will likely be shooting off of a tripod. I use the touch focus point feature on the rear screen and take what I feel is an appropriate number of images but usually 3 or 4 images. I combine them into a single image in Photoshop, which is relatively easy.

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/focus-stacking.html

Hope this helps.

Absolutely Photoshop can be used for light stacking jobs, but for anything approaching 10 or more images, I go for dedicated software. And yes, I’m guilty of bypassing the focus bracketing feature in my camera for a manual approach using the screen and sometimes it works, but more often I miss areas and have gaps in my stack that just look weird. If you don’t have focus bracketing in your camera I think erring on the side of taking too many photos could save you this heartache. If you scroll up a bit to the Do as I say, not as I do link you’ll see what I mean. Sigh.

One interesting thing about stacking is that during alignment your image may be cropped along the edges by the software. If you compare the closest bracket to the furthest you will see that the image is not aligned if the focal plane is greatly different. During the alignment phase the pixels are shited to align the discrepancy. This can result in the image being cropped along the edges during the mergine phase. If you have composed your image precisely and close to the edge of the frame your composition can be altered in a bad way. My conclusion is to provide more space along the edge of the frame than you plan to use. In photoshop this area along the edge is not cropped but is blurry. In Heliconfocus it’s entirely eliminated by the software as described.

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