Wide-Aperture Stacking
In early January of 2012 I saw a post by “Akira” of a
Chrysanthemum taken with the CRT Nikkor 55mm f/1.2. It was not
a stacked photo, but it was a close-up and I liked the combination
of sharpness and softness it presented. It started me to think
differently about photo stacking and marks the beginning of a
breakthrough in my work.
Perhaps I had been looking at the wrong end of the lens aperture
all this time. For years I had tried to push aperture to the high
numbers and narrow openings because that way I could get more
DOF and detail. And I did this with stacking as well. Everyone
knows that large, wide-open, apertures give us a very thin DOF,
and I never wanted that. And I had steadfastly avoided even
looking at a whole range of powerful Nikon lenses that were made
for extreme close-up work. And many of them were very, very
sharp, even wide open. What possible value could they be for my
work? But then I began to see how they could be used.
What if I used these exotic sharp lenses wide open (or nearly so)
and then stacked that very narrow depth of field to amass as much
of the subject as I wanted in focus and just let the rest of the photo
go to bokeh and blur? I experimented with what few lenses I had
that were good for close-up work, and that were also both fast and
sharp. I liked what I saw.
And then I got a copy of one of the exotic Nikkors, the CRT Nikkor
55mm f/1.2 lens. These babies are expensive! And I began to
stack. And sure enough, stacking selective areas in the subject,
combined with the broad sense of blur or bokeh, made for very
interesting photos. After all these years I had found a technique that
actually satisfied me. I felt like one of those gold miners who pan for
gold for many years but never get a strike, and then hit pay dirt.
I had at last found something that I actually liked. As it turns out I
don’t see anyone else using this particular technique, at least to
any extent.
I began to look for other exotic Nikkors, and they are exotic for
several reasons. Most of them were not made with an F-mount, but
rather for special equipment. They have off-size threads or no