Focus Stacking in Macro Photography

Focus Stacking in Macro Photography

Thank you Gary for passing along this great link to me!

"depth of field (DOF) depends almost entirely on two factors: aperture value and magnification. The wider the aperture we shoot at, and the closer we get to the subject, the shallower the depth of field becomes. When doing macro work, we often shoot at 1:1 magnification or more, compelling us to be extremely close to the subject. This inevitably means that depth of field is extremely shallow - so shallow that in many cases, most of the subject goes out of focus, even if it’s as tiny as a fly, and even if we close the aperture to f/16 or more. This phenomenon simply results from the rules of optics, and can’t be solved conventionally unless we close the aperture so much that it will critically hurt image quality (and sometime even that doesn’t suffice). Yet it turns out that if we're willing to put in a little more effort and work carefully, we could take macro pictures at any magnification, with close-to-optimal apertures guaranteeing high quality and still get our desired depth of field – all by using a method called focus stacking."

Read the entire articles and see the images here

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For further reading on macro photography take a look at Erez's previous articles in this series:
The what and why of wildlife macro photographyWhat we want in a macro shot - DetailWhat we want in a macro shot - BackgroundWhat we want in a macro shot - POV and special scenes
Macro photography: Understanding magnification