lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I love your set-up. What ever works (the garage /workshop?). And I thought my Living Room shooting spot was crude and funky. Does your lens have IF? Nikon lenses have had IF for some time. That could be helpful, though with your focusing rail less so. My Pentax Macro lenses all have old school focus where the lens barrel extends. I have a very similar focusing rail so moving that instead of refocusing through the subject eliminates problems with changes in magnification that one might get if one were to merely focus through the dandelion with lens extension. Yet, the few stacks I've done, also of about 30 exposures worked fine even when moving the lens to focus. Perhaps the software can correct for proportional changes in magnification?

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

The Tamron 180 f/3.5 macro has internal focus.
And even with the focus rail the PS version of stacking will align and resize the images. It is supposed to be automatic but I just found that manual control to first align and then blend works better.
The last two years my local photo store has had a big celebration for their anniversary, this year they will have their 3rd Anniversary, and among other things the local Professional Photographers group runs classes. I have taken the Macro class both years and if they have it again I'll take it. Last year there were 3 instructors, each doing something different. One guy did a real quick "trick" demo. He put a pocket watch on a black velvet cloth, using a Nikon D810 or D4 (he had both, I don't remember which he used), double macro speedlights set for ETTL mounted on the camera/lens and a medium length macro lens, then hand held, set for high speed burst and moved in closer while holding down the shutter button. loaded the shots into LR on his laptop and sent them to PS. Set PS to align and blend then continued his lecture while they processed (we could watch the processing on the projector screen on the wall behind him). Somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes after he started the lecture the finished image was on the screen. One small area of the far side of the watch was not sharp. I know he had to practice that to set it up to work and do it so fast and smoothly, but it was impressive. I tried it twice and got junk. Maybe I will try it again, it would be useful for things when out and about without being able to set up for focus stacking.

As to my setup, as stated the table is an HO train table, I can just see after the remodeling in the family room is done and everything is cleaned up and put away I will be trying another stack and Jon (24 - mental age 5) will come along and run his train. Extra step to process, wait for the Southern Pacific Daylight to go by between frames.

Treepusher Loc: Kingston, Massachusetts

One hesitates to use the word 'awesome,' as it tends to be overused. But this is AWESOME!!! Great work!!!

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Thank you very much.
I know, my wife uses "awesome" like a machine gun. (Her whole family does for that matter.)
I prefer a simple "well done" like in the Army or even just a look, maybe a smile and a nod when someone does what they are supposed to do anyway. Worked in the classroom for 34 years. My wife thinks I don't show enough emotion and praise. Our oldest was/is Army reserve and understands the whole thing. Our youngest (only daughter) also gets it pretty much and knows she is Daddy's Princess and will still be Dr Princess when she finishes school. Middle child (younger son) is mentally challenged (24, mental age 5) and wants praise etc as conditioned by Mom. But when the two of us are alone he accepts the looks, nods etc just fine.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

OK. Thanks for the information. So my instructor was correct but she did not know why or explained it. That Ps aligns and resizes so I did not have to worry about the type of focusing system I was using.