last butterfly shot of the year! probably!

[GOLDENORFE]

a small copper, shot at whixall moss couple weeks ago. there were plenty around, all looked newly emerged.
hand held with mpe-65 lens, focus stacked 2-5 frames
phil

[Pete Eeles]

Incredible images, Phil!

Wouldn't you need to use a tripod if you want to focus stack? Either that, or you've got very very steady hands!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Jack Harrison]

I can understand the principle behind photo stacking although have never actually tried it.

So how can the various images be brought into accurate register if the camera is hand held? I can appreciate that if the camera is fixed firmly, eg on tripod, then all images in the set should have the same view. But with the inevitable slight variation when hand held, how do you merge/stack the, albeit marginally, different shots? Is there software that will do this for you?

Jack

[Rogerdodge]

Phil
As the others have said - some spectacular images - I really liked the ant attendees in the other thread!

I also have the mpe-65 lens, and get some fantastic images from it.
However, I am limited to virtually 2 dimensional images as I haven't a clue about how focus stacking is done.
So-
What program do you use?
How do you do it?

With some long, wet, weekends in prospect this could be fun to keep me occupied!

Cheers

[David M]

Fabulous shots. The detail on the scales and hairs is quite amazing.

[Jack Harrison]

Photo stacking search came up with this most interesting website. Delve deep and there are some fascinating photos to be enjoyed:

http://lordv.smugmug.com/

Brian Valentine is a neighbour of yours Neil (he lives in Worthing). Might be useful to make contact. He and you obviously have complementary talents.

Jack

[GOLDENORFE]

thanks for comments

yes i only shoot handheld, it just takes practise to brace camera in different shooting positions, ie resting left elbow on knee to hold steady.

i use zerene stacker program which is currently the best focus stacking program available, there is a free program called czp which is very good also.
the programs do a fairly good job of aligning frames. but can always use layers and masks in photoshop for frames that dont align very well.

will post a tutorial covering how i shoot these butterfly shots

phil

[Lee Hurrell]

Hi Phil,

Just to concur, simply staggering images!

Cheers

Lee