OpenTube

Macro Focus Stacking | Ask David Bergman

Adorama

13,072 views

Today's question from Susan T. is, “Hey David, I recently got myself a macro lens, and I’ve been having a blast taking super close-up photos of everything in my house. I’m having trouble getting some things entirely in focus, even at f/32. Is that normal, and what can I do about it?”

Go to http://www.AskDavidBergman.com to submit your photo question, see David's gear list, and view the episode archive.

00:00 Introduction
00:57 Minimum Focusing Distance and Magnification
02:38 Depth of Field Challenges
02:53 Lens Diffraction and the Sweet Spot
05:05 Watch Photography
05:42 Focus Bracketing
08:12 Focus Stacking for Landscapes
08:27 Photoshop Focus Stacking
09:14 Dedicated Focus Stacking Software
09:39 Tilt-Shift Lenses
10:26 Outro

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✘ GEAR USED:

Canon RF 85mm f/1.2 L USM Lens
https://www.adorama.com/car8512.html?...

Canon RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM Lens
https://www.adorama.com/car10028.html...

Canon EOS R5 Mark II Mirrorless Camera
https://www.adorama.com/car5m2.html?k...

Manfrotto 454 Positioning Plate
https://www.adorama.com/bg3419.html?k...

Novoflex CASTEL-MICRO Focusing Rack for Focus Stacking
https://www.adorama.com/nvcastelmcro....

Canon TS-E 90mm f/2.8 Tilt & Shift Manual Focus Telephoto Lens
https://www.adorama.com/ca9028afu.htm...

Canon Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R
https://www.adorama.com/carcrma.html?...

✘ PRODUCTION EQUIPMENT USED:

Canon EOS R Mirrorless Full Frame Digital Camera Body
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Canon RF 24mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM Lens
https://www.adorama.com/car2418.html?...

Manfrotto MT055XPRO3 Black Aluminum Tripod with MVH502AH Pro Video Head
https://www.adorama.com/bg055xprob52....

CLAR Illumi Max 500 High Power 5600K LED Light
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Glow EZ Lock Octa Quick XL Softbox With Bowens Mount (48")
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Prograde cards and readers
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#macro #focusstacking #adorama

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Software:
Helicon Focus
https://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconso...

Zerene Stacker
https://www.zerenesystems.com/cms/sta...

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THANKS SO MUCH FOR WATCHING!

20 Comments

@tarjei99 1 year ago (edited)

The Canon focus stacking might be the thing that retains me as a customer instead of heading off to OM land, with cameras that also does a high performance ProCapture. The price and compactness of the lenses makes something like an OM-1 mark ii very attractive to me. Especially for travel.

Currently, I'm up to my neck in Canon gear.

You might also mention flash for macro work. But you have to increase the ISO to make it work.

Roman UnpronouncablePolishName has a really great video about macro photography for ordinary people in a competitor's YouTube channel.

@Weldon2004 1 year ago (edited)

A big part of why I upgraded to the Canon R5MII (with RF100mm) was the addition of firing the Speedlite at each focus step point during the focus bracketing operation for macro insect photography. Yes, there are ways to get around the lack of that feature in the earlier R5 model and other camera bodies that don't fire the flash at each bracket step but what's the fun it that😀. The other big feature that got me to upgrade was RAW pre-capture buffer for my wildlife photography. That feature almost feels like cheating because I can easily get those wildlife shots that felt impossible without it😬.

@brynscott2997 1 year ago

Hi David I do a lot of macro and use focus stacking all the time. Great to watch this video which just confirmed what I am already doing. Merging the images in different ways and the combining them again can work well but takes a bit of playing around with. Thanks.

@chrispatmore8944 1 year ago

Wow, I didn’t realise it was so complicated with Canon. I use Olympus/OM System cameras and they have built-in focus bracketing and focus stacking, which do a fantastic job, even handheld, although using a tripod and cable release give better results, especially when taking more than 10-15 shots. And because of the smaller M4/3 sensor, 1:1 fills up more of the 20Mb frame without having to crop. And the shorter focal lengths of their macro lenses also allows for more depth of field with single shots. For compositing the shots, I find that the very affordable Affinity Photo’s built-in focus stacking function is simple, quick and very accurate, and works with both RAW files and processed formats such as JPEG and TIFF. Much easier than the Photoshop method, and a match for a dedicated program such as Helicon at a fraction of the cost.

@Laiquatan 1 year ago

For what it's worth, I tested the Canon R5II's focus stacking in-camera versus having my editing software do it (I use Affinity). I thought the in-camera stack was pretty good until I saw what the editing software could do - worlds better than in-camera. Now I'll only use in-camera stacking if I want a rough draft or preview of the stack for some reason, but for my final product I'll always use the editing software. Maybe one of these years I'll spring for dedicated stacking software, but for now what I've been getting from the editing software is as good as I can imagine wanting it to be.

@photoquent 1 year ago

That is one expensive watch! I love Focus Stacking for both landscapes and macro. Need to do more!

@testshoot 1 year ago

Cool pointers! I'm grabbing a Phase One this weekend and have a high-end watch client here in Beverly Hills to test this exacte scenario. The Pete M video was a bit over my head, but I feel pretty good to produce images at volume

@terrygoodfellow1876 1 year ago

David
As always ... you put it simply and clearly so you can make a start on a project. I do a lot of macro work. I find focus bracketing is OK for down to 0.5X with subjects with small depth of field. To about X2 I use a Cognisys auto rail with macro lens. Large depth of field and beyond X2 is definitely auto rail. I'd suggest lighting is a difficult area when you get close because the subject can literally cook and bulky gear gets into the view. I'd use a delay timer to start the process and delay in between shots to allow the gear to stabilise. Wobble is a problem with any gear and not just shutters. Forget Photoshop ... too slow ... use a dedicated focus stacking program. I rate Helicon as best ... the pro version can be loaded from lightroom as it takes raw into Helicon ... does the business quickly and puts a DNG RAW back in to Lightroom for you to finish off.

@JustLittleMary 1 year ago

Hi David, Thanks for the video. Lots of good info. I usually use Helicon Focus for my focus stacking but occasionally I'll do it in Photoshop. When I use Photoshop, I find that I get better results if I run Auto-Align Layers before running Auto-Blend. Thanks again.

@michaelharmon7162 1 year ago

I would use a large format camera with the Nikon macro lens. I never used focus stacking as I never had a need for it.

@kennethnielsen3864 1 year ago

Thanks for sharing.

@kimclark704 1 year ago

Thank-you for the recommendation of software!

@tpiorkowski 1 year ago

Hi David, great video and thanks for sharing the techniques. I do have one question, when photo stacking the watch, where do you recommend your starting AF point? Thanks, Tom

@ahargusphoto 1 year ago

Super helpful video! Makes me want to get back to playing around with my 100mm macro lens again! I've been approached to do some food photography for a local restaurant group and focus bracketing could be a great tool for this. Thanks David!

@entrigueall2661 1 year ago

Good and informative video as always, thanks.

@kurtozan251 1 year ago

Bergman is the best! Great video !!

@charlieross-BRM 1 year ago (edited)

I've been curious if focus breathing has any bearing on blending. So far I'm OK with my modest stacking of under 10 layers for consumer products that average 2 to 10 inches deep. I just move the focus cross hairs to key product features I want to have clean, eg. a logo, a zipper tag, a battery terminal, etc. and manually focus peak those things with magnify assist turned on. It's enough. Is the blending process (PS) adjusting for layers being at different scales of the subject? Maybe I'm way off track on focus breathing effects; it wouldn't be the first time. I have a rail for the alternate approach but I have not tried it yet.

@jonasweiss5817 1 year ago

Does not camera distance change the image size?

@jonasweiss5817 1 year ago

Might you be privileged with asking Canon what their bracketing equation is?

@MichaelJazayeriMD 1 year ago

Another great video! I currently have a Canon 5dsr and 100mm Canon macro lens, and have been doing manual focus and multiple images and then stacking them with software. It is a very tedious process, however. I am thinking of upgrading to a mirrorless Canon which does focus bracketing, but I use flash quite a bit for my macro shots, and am concerned if that is going to be an issue. It seems the camera does focus bracketing very quickly and my Canon dedicated macro flash may not be able to keep up. Any suggestions are appreciated.