The Art of Focus Stacking - Matrix Software

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Three People to Impress
They are, of course, “Me, Myself, and I,” the ones who
really care about my photos. My wife, kids, and friends
only want to see a very few photographs. After maybe
ten or twelve, they start to look around. And I have
100,000 plus. Other photographers like this, but want
to change that, etc. This leaves just me as the one
who sees it all, takes the photos, stacks them, and
enjoys them. If I am happy with a photo, warts and all,
that is enough.
The following six two-page spreads will really let you
know whether you want to play around with focus
stacking or not. Going in, you should know upfront
what the advantages and disadvantages of focus
stacking are.
Any stacked photo, in particular a short stack, is at
best a comprise, an attempt to blend the sharper parts
of a series of photos into a single photo. As with all
compromises, the complete truth by definition is violated,
hopefully in as few ways as possible, but some
information is lost because we are selecting layers of
the photo rather than a single shot.
This is why I say that short-stacked photos are the
photographer’s ‘impression’ of the subject. They combine
a series of desirable photo layer/highlights into a
single photo. As focus stackers, we choose to create
an artfully-flawed photo that gives a more desirable
impression that any single-focus photo. That is the
theory and this is where the art comes in. The art of
focus stacking is to sample focus effectively so that
the finished photo provides more information than any
single-layer photo might.
And by ‘information’, I don’t mean just the pixels in the
photo. A single-shot traditional photo offers that. Focus
stacking (short-stack) attempts to sample the subject
selectively, bringing different areas of the photo into
higher focus and ignoring the rest.
Beginning focus stackers naturally try to get everything
they can into focus because it is a relief from
traditional photos that dictate one main focus area. It
is fun to finally see all that focus clarity. But as time
goes by, just pure focus (like with a rack) is not only
very time consuming but is not always satisfying. In
addition, the existence of artifacts at close inspection
can be discouraging. In the end, focus stacking is impressionistic,
a creative effort on our part to present a
subject as we experience it.
In the following pages one stacked photo is compared
at different stacking rates to an un-stacked traditional
photo. For this example, I am using a 12-stacked photo
taken in the wild but with the help of a light tent to
make sure that no wind was moving the subject, which
in this case is the Dogtooth Violet (also called “Trout
Lily”), one of our most lovely spring flowers. This one
is getting ready to open. The forest floors are literally
covered with the mottled leaves of this plant in springtime,
and from all those leaves some smaller number
of flowers bloom each year.
Twelve stacks is a bunch, enough to embrace quite a
wide range, from the front leaf tips in the close foreground,
the flower itself, to the back leaf leaning the
other way – quite a reach.
At first glance, things are in focus, from the front
to the back. Note the tips of the leaves, the
top of the flower, the stems, and even some of
the dry tree leaves making up the background
which I purposely did not drill down on, preferring
some out-of-focus areas. The photo looks
pretty good. I have not color corrected it or anything
else, other than a little bit of sharpening.
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