A few days back, I wondered if I could achieve focus stacking doing the macro rock-your-camera-to-focus trick. For the uninitiated, the idea is that slight movement of your camera toward and/or away from your subject is an easier focusing method than using the focus ring on your lens.
I thought my logic was straightforward:
- Focus breathing means that even if you're using a tripod photo stacking software will still have to deal with shot-to-shot variation in framing/perspective
- My body does not support focus bracketing
- My body does have high burst rates
Put the three together and here we are. The daisy in the post is 39 images fed into helicon focus 9. I've now spent a total of 10 minutes with this software and it's super easy. Here's one of the photos in the stack to give you a feel for how thin the depth of field was:
For kicks, here are two more stacks. They're not super compelling photos, but they do show that the concept is viable.
Everything in this post was shot at f/4 on a Sigma 35mm f/2 with 26mm of extension tubes in the great outdoors with no additional lighting.
Try macro shots of random items around the house, that's always fun to play with. One of my nicest around-the-house shots is of the ball on a ball point pen
The level of precision that goes into every day items is truly amazing.