Episode 53: Focus Stacking
You can control depth of field in a photo using narrow apertures, but what do you do when that’s not enough to get everything in focus? For macro and some landscape photography, the answer is focus stacking, a technique that blends several images shot at different focal lengths. Kirk and Jeff talk about how it works and when you’d want to use it.
Hosts:
Show Notes:
(View show notes with images at PhotoActive.co)
- How-To: Focus Stacking in Photoshop, Adobe Create
- Episode #20 - The Blur-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named
- Photographing the Canadian Rockies, Part 1, Nick Page’s video about when he shot the ice image that appears in the Adobe Create article.
- Affinity Photo
- Pixelmator Pro
- Helicon Focus
- Zerene Stacker
- Fuji X Secrets, by Rico Rico Pfirstinger
- Interview: Tulsa artist Bob Sober gives insects their close-up in Oklahoma City exhibit
- Episode 47: Jeff Becomes an Event Photographer
Our Snapshots:
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Nick Page’s photo from Jeff’s article in Adobe Create Magazine.
Red Onion
Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
Shutter speed: 1.6 sec
Aperture: f/11
ISO: 160
Photo: Kirk McElhearn
Focus-stacked coins
Camera: Fujifilm X-T1
Composited in Adobe Photoshop
Photo: Jeff Carlson
Barn and Fence
Focus-stacked from the next two images.
Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 160
Photo: Jeff Carlson
Barn and Fence
Image #1 with the foreground fence in focus and the barn out of focus
Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 160
Photo: Jeff Carlson
Barn and Fence
Image #2 with the barn in the background in focus, but the fence in the foreground blurry.
Camera: Fujifilm X-T3
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 160
Photo: Jeff Carlson