Yesterday, I experimented some and found what I consider the Achilles heel of the method. This isn’t a factor for inanimate objects but outdoor nature photography becomes difficult to say the least. I was trying to shoot a clump of red berries in a bush and then a flower (this is Florida)> There was no detectable wind the the 1/4 mph (or whatever) was just enough to move the subject 1/8” to 1/16”, just barely. That would have had little to no effect in regular photography but it totally ruled out stacked images for any purpose. That + the sheer length of time the subject has to remain motionless is hard in the wild. For my initial experiments, I was doing just 25 images with a 2 sec interval. That’s a life time in some circumstances but a bunch of articles recommended 100!
This is different from the focus stacking that i learned when I was in a camera club about 15 years ago. Then the shooting formula was still on a tripod, you would focus the camera on the nearest point you wanted, then the furthest and then input the number of steps that you want. Typically, it was along the line of 5 to 10 intervals, max.
The major downside was that the camera had to be tethered to and controlled by a computer. And the software was expensive.
At any rate, it looks as if this latest technique is limited to purely static subjects. But so to is HDR but to a much lessor extent. The most images you need in HDR is 5 and my camera will whip those out in less than a second. So you have some latitude.
Definitely a limitation on the use of the technique. I’m excited about trying it out on resting dragonflies next summer. Here’s where the ingenuity of the photographer has to step in. So, a dragonfly on a thin plant stalk will be unmanageable. But on a sturdy plant like a rose bush stem or on a fence will be doable. And the possibilities for a foreground/landscape shot is definitely practicable.
Even with a resting dragonfly, you’d have to be lucky if you wanted 100 exposures. I need to experiment some and find out exactly what a single step width is. The camera allows a step width from 1 to 10 with 4 defined as standard. But there is no description that I found after searching for a while of what exactly in concrete terms is a single step. Maybe we can kick the step width up to 10 and reduce the number of exposures by 1/2.5 and get the same coverage. But no, I think you’d have to be extremely… Read more »
As you say we haven’t played around with the step size. For all I know the last 50 shots focused the wall and the air in between. I have plenty to do to calibrate what the steps equal for the Sony 90mm macro. If I were rigorous I’d put a millimeter ruler at the minimum focus distance and run the bracketing program and see what a width of “1” does. Then “5” and then “10.” Maybe I will.
There’s a gulf between defining what a step distance is and having no idea at all.
As a rough guess for close up work probably ten to twenty shots at 2-4 step width might work well.