Thanks, Stan! A critical difference with the first shot is that there
was some actual empty space between the dragonfly and the background.
The ones perches on grass, especially the orange male, had grass stalks
all very close to them.
I very much overshoot - I just put the K-3 onto fast continuous
shooting, focused till everything I wanted sharp was blurry, hit the
shutter, and slowly refocused. After each sequent I put my hand over the
lens and took a shot to know that sequence was complete, and then did it
again. Since this was in the field and the dragonflies do move around, I
took several shots. I then pulled the raw files into Photoshop,
identified the range of shots that covered the area I wanted in focus,
and did a batch adjustment on them in Camera Raw and opened them up. I
save the TIFFs, use bridge to load them all back into PS as layers
within a single image. After that it is just two commands - Auto Align
Layers and Auto Blend For Sharpness. Bada-bing-bada-boom...
Sometimes the dragonfly would twitch part of its body - like turn its
head or wave a leg - and that image would mess up the stacking process.
Sometimes that images can be deleted and the stack will work, often it
makes the whole stack useless.
It would clearly be better to do this with a focusing rail but I'm
working in the field, with moving subjects. I just use a monopod and try
to hold things steady.
Mark
On 7/13/2014 1:28 PM, Stan Halpin wrote:
Nicely done!
I prefer the lighting, the darker (and more out of focus) background in the
first one, but the other two work as well.
Did you overshoot, and then decide later how many images to combine, how many
to leave out? Or could you see the DOF effect well enough while shooting?
And are you refocusing the lens or are you instead using a macro rail?
stan
On Jul 12, 2014, at 7:24 PM, Mark C <[email protected]> wrote:
http://www.markcassino.com/b2evolution/index.php/stack-focused-dragonflies
Stack focusing not so much to get more DOF but rather to get a controlled and very
shallow DOF when the background is close and cluttered... C&C welcome.
Mark
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