We purchased some of these, so I wanted to try more stacking. I am planning my shots more with new growth and a large pedal off to the side to tell how big the planet is. I found with these bright plants that stopping down a stop helps.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything is always welcome.
Technical Details
R7 rf 100 f/2.8 F/16 (which was a mistake but lead to a short stack od 10). ISO 400 1/60 Taken after a rain. used a TP. Use Zerene which I am liking a lot. I used DMAP with only 5% on the mask and used a little bit from the PMAX. Photo AI wanted to sharpen a little more, maybe because of f/16 diffraction but who knows.
Now this really would make a Christmas card! You managed the reds nicely, I would say. I will let the stacking Guros give their thoughts on that part of the shot. Looks fine to me. Nice composition.
Hi Dean,
Yep gonna leave the stacking talk to someone better qualified that me!
As Shirley, said, this is an even better candidate for a Christmas card with all of that real-estate for text.
That darker red leaf? with the heavy texture in the lower right corner adds depth and appeal in my opinion.
Dean, this looks very good and yes, it would make a fine Christmas card. When you have overlapped areas that you want sharp, using a high f-stop reduces or avoids what I call overlap blur. (For a description of overlap blur look at my NPN stacking workshop here from a year ago.) I’ve tested multiple lenses and have yet to see noticeable blur (even at 100 % viewing) for a decent lens at f/16. If you go to f/22 and beyond, you do see slight softening at 100%, which won’t be noticeable unless you make a very large print and can often be “fixed” with some extra sharpening.
Thanks @Mark_Seaver I will try that and see how it works out. Oddly enough, I thought the idea of focus stacking was to keep the lens more open even though the focus point is small. One plus I see in using f/16 would be fewer images to stack. In the R7 I have the setting for focus change at the lowest of 1. That means a lot more photos needed, but at f/16 maybe I can change the setting
Your camera knows what f-stop you’re using and changes the focus distance accordingly. With my R5, I found by experiment that the setting that it came with worked very well. (Without looking at the camera setting, I think it was at 4.) I tried 6 to minimize the number of shots and found soft areas so I’m back to 4. With that working fine, I don’t see any reason to go smaller.
