least one of the frames will be the shot you would have taken if you
only had one shot – the traditional photo with one point of focus.
When all else does not work, usually there may be a single photo
that will do the job.
In summary, it is well worth it to spend some time tinkering with the
stack before you abandon the shot, especially if it is a photo you
really like.
Short Stacks for Macro, Not Micro
How close is too close? That is a question you will find yourself
answering as you get into focus stacking. Of course, it depends a
lot on what lens you are using but I have found that trying to focus
on too tiny a part or flower generally shows poor results. Let’s take
some examples.
The advantage of traditional one-shot photography is that you don’t
have artifacts but unless you are photographing a two dimensional
subject (like a page from the newspaper) and even then, unless
that newspaper is flat and exactly parallel to the plane of the
camera’s sensor, you automatically have distortion from
perspective. That perspective puts one area of the photo in focus
and throws another out of focus to some degree.
And of course the eternal quest for the holy grail of depth-of-field by
photographers meets with disappointment as diffraction exacts its
toll of resolution at smaller apertures, thus the main reason for
focus stacking. Yet focus stacking, as we have pointed out, cannot
but fail to capture every bit of the subject but it can manage to fail
successfully if we are careful, resulting in a photo that has the
appearance of real depth of field.
Landscapes
Focus stacking is probably ‘more’ successful in enhancing focus in
non-close-up shots like mid-range and distant subjects such as
landscapes, where adding even a little more depth of field
dramatically enhances the shot. Look at the landscape shots else-
where in this book for an example of this
Close-up, Macro, and Micro
Where focus stacking breaks down most visibly is in extreme close-
up shots, what we would call micro, rather than macro shots. When