umbrella magnolia - 11 image focus stack

Re-inspired by a recent article in the Luminous Landscape on focus

stacking I decided to give the technique another try this morning. The

idea was to keep all the raindrops in focus while blurring the messy

background. Did it work? Thanks for looking!

Properly photographed.

Cheers

Cheers

PDE

You did a good job! Lot of work involved as well.

Refreshing!

Successful presentation.

Thank you all fr your kind comments. I definitely will play with the technique some more in the future. It's fun.

It certainly worked - love drops and the greens. I practice the technique once in a while but I should read that article to see if I can improve my process. 

Thanks Tony!

Yes, the colors and drops made me get out the camera in the first place. I usually spend 15 min in the morning stretching my back and in the summer I like to do it outside. I looked up into these leaves for maybe ten minutes while going through my routine.

The article had two valuable tidbits. None of them earth-shattering, but I hadn't thought of it: first, use focus peaking when manually focusing. I had always preferred to enlarge the image, but it's cool to watch the focal plane move through the entire image. Second: divide the process into two steps: first align, then blend. Somehow it seems to work better. There are a few things I do differently (I select seamless colors), but the main plus is that it made me play with an old technique again.

Christoph