CliffMcKenzie Loc: Lake Athens Texas

Focus Stacking…non-Macro. Have you ever seen a professional landscape image used in advertising and noticed everything is tack sharp?

First, good news, all you need is a camera and tripod.

Just got back from a 4-day shoot in Texas hill country and will start production on numerous stacked images of bluebonnets. One stack I am really excited about is a railroad track overrun by bluebonnets leading up to an old truss bridge.

First shot is always the same, your hand (more on this in a moment). Next image is to manually focus on the flowers closest to you. Make sure they are tack sharp. Typically, I use aperture or manual priority and ISO set to native (64 Nikon – 100 Canon). My f\stop is a function of how I feel about the image and what I anticipate the number in the stack (usually 3 to 7). Wiser people may tell you to shoot wide open, would like to see their response. All of your settings other than manually focusing do not change.

Next shot, a few flowers further away. Then the next is a cactus in the middle of the tracks followed by further flowers and last is the bridge. The last image is your hand again (no focus, just shoot it). The hand tells you after uploading the start and stop of the stack.

I stack the images using LRC (left click, Edit In, look at last “open in layers in PS”) round tripping to PS. This creates the image I will process\produce.