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.
