Anemone

[bobfriedman]

FujiFilm GFX100S ,Moritex ML-13538-80V70 135mm f/3.8
1/40s f/3.8 iso100 150-stack

[kers]

wonderfull..!
did you need all the 150 photos?

[Bob_B]

Way to go! I'm also curious about your stacking method. Computer-controlled or manual? If manual, wow, that is a lot of effort.

[francois]

Whatever the technical details, the result is phenomenal.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Fantastic.

(But I wonder how it would look with, say, image #131 omitted.)   

[Arlen]

Simply beautiful, Bob, and well worth all the effort you put into it.

[bobfriedman]

Fantastic.

(But I wonder how it would look with, say, image #131 omitted.)   

I am sorry but I don't understand... image #131?

[Mark Nadler]

The main subject is not only wonderfully presented but the green leafy materials is nicely arranged.

mark

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I am sorry but I don't understand... image #131?

If he blended 150 images, would it matter if just one was left out?
Say, number 131 (chosen at random) for instance.

[Mark Nadler]

Bob, this is just a question for you and anyone else viewing your image.  When doing this style of photography, how important is a perfect specimen?  I admit, I am going to try the technique you use next winter and I am going to use a perfect form of whatever I take a picture of image even if I have to do some doctoring of it.  For me, imperfections in the flower detract from the image.  I wonder what others think.

mark

[bobfriedman]

Bob, this is just a question for you and anyone else viewing your image.  When doing this style of photography, how important is a perfect specimen?  I admit, I am going to try the technique you use next winter and I am going to use a perfect form of whatever I take a picture of image even if I have to do some doctoring of it.  For me, imperfections in the flower detract from the image.  I wonder what others think.

mark

this is subjective.

[bobfriedman]

If he blended 150 images, would it matter if just one was left out?
Say, number 131 (chosen at random) for instance.

so every image is a focal plane slice.. hence.. any omission produces out of focus results.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

so every image is a focal plane slice.. hence.. any omission produces out of focus results.

But if only one out of 150 is removed, I wonder if the lack of perfect focus is visible.

[bobfriedman]

But if only one out of 150 is removed, I wonder if the lack of perfect focus is visible.

so I determine the number of image planes by trial and error since I don't know the lens depth of field or equivalently the width of the focal plane, the number of planes is approximate so in some cases removing a single plane may make no difference but in my setups they are determined by magnifying the resulting image and searching for out-of-focus areas. with flowers that are deep, you will be surprised to see just how many images are required to provide continuous sharpness.  Consider the extent from one end of a flower to the base of visible stem at around 4 inches = 101.6 mm and suppose the depth of field for a particular lens at macro distances is around 1 mm, hence very quickly you get 102 images. If I was photographing a subject of reasonable flatness the number of image planes would decrease appreciably. Some of the large flowers like a Calla lily are six inches from the tip to base of the visible stem. I don't have any images saved where the number of images was not large enough to show you but you would see say in the stem regular periods of out-of-focus bands.

by the way,  for high magnification using metallurgic microscope objectives the depth of field is on the order of microns. of course the image range extent for a bug is much less than the flower.

also it has happened more than once that I have actually printed one of these macro florals at say around 17x22 and have had my framer notice some out of focus areas... so to be on the safe side I do oversample.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

Thanks for the excellent explanation, Bob.