Spider Wort

I was trying out a mew ball head, Acratech, with a 90mm macro lens. Can

anyone explain why I am not getting good results with focus stacking.

When I focus on different areas of an image, let's say 4-5 areas, my photo

merged images come out unclear, not blended properly. Advice? This

image was not blended, just a straight image. Thanks. Larry

Larry,

I'm no expert or even fan of focus stacking, since I find it time consuming and not all that great, but from what I understand, you need to focus on like the closest section to your lens, then just a little further away etc till get the whole thing covered. You would use a very shallow dof for this, like 2.8. You also need to have the subject not move at all and not be to different in size- which does change with different focusing- or the software won't be able to line everything up right.

I could see this being exceptionally difficult outside.

Try using a high iso to get fast as you can shutter speed and increase your f stop. Try several shots at like 14, 16, 18, 20  to see if you can capture the whole thing in focus.

Take a flower inside to more control its movement.

Just some suggestions- maybe someone else can help you more with the stacking- there are many "tutorials" on line I'm sure. I just don't have the patience :) G

Gregory and Verena,   Thank you.  Yes, this is essentially what I understand and attempted.  The glitch is that the flower was outside.  The wind made it impossible to get the shot right.  Many thanks for verifying the process.  Larry

Tony,   Thanks for the video tutorial.  As I said above, the shot was basically not possible because of the wind outside.  Even nominal movement of the flower messes up this whole thing.   The video was a nice review.  The process is more of a hassle than the video suggests because of the time it takes to save all the images and then wait till PS does its thing.  I will use the stacking in the future for images with no movement.  Thanks, Tony.  Larry