Welcome back to the "Make it Monday: Sharp Focus" series. In today's post, we are going to take a look at how to make sure that your images are in sharp focus using a tactic called focus stacking! This term, "focus stacking" refers to taking multiple photographs and combining them together to form one image using a program such as Adobe Photoshop. This technique works best with images that have a shallow depth of field like macro photography. The photograph below, taken by Muhammad Mahdi Karim, is a great example of focus stacking:
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| Karim, Muhammad Mahdi, Tachinid Fly, 2009. |
There are three images that make up the triptych above although the final photograph was actually created by combining six different images into one. On the left, we can see that the foreground (front of the Tachinid Fly) is in sharp focus while the wings and body of the fly remain out of focus. In the middle image, we can see that the body of the fly is in focus and in the third image, the entire fly is sharp: foreground the background. In the video below, Peter Bargh describes how to set up the technique when you are shooting the images. Be sure to pay close attention to what Bargh is saying in regards to his aperture, which ultimately will control the depth of field:
Once you have the multiple images that you intend to use, you want to combine them into one image. Below is a video tutorial that explains that exact technique:
Stay tuned for the final blog post in this "Make it Monday" series related to focusing your images!
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01. "Focus Stacking." Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundation, 14 July 2014. Web. 21 July 2014.
02. "Micro2Macro.net." Micro2Macro.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.
03. Bargh, Peter. "Focus Stacking - a Macro Photography Technique." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.
04. "Focus Stacking in Photoshop CS5." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.
05. Cade, DL. "These Focus Stacking Walkthroughs Will Help You Take Your Macro Photography to the Next Level." PetaPixel RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.