Focus stacking to get the perfect photo

[PeteJ]

Have you ever been frustrated when shooting your models by having one part in focus and most of the rest out of focus? Yea, I would bet that pretty much all of us have. I recently discovered the concept of photo stacking. This is a technique where you take multiple photos with different focal points and combine them to make a picture that has everything in perfect focus. I have been playing with photoshop, my Sony A7II and some of my models. I am still learning how to do this, but it seems pretty straight forward. Apparently, there are a number of programs out there that will do this. Some free, some not. As it happens, I have been using Photoshop for years and it happens to have that option built in.

I am not good enough with this to show any of the work yet, but here is great article that explains the concept better that I ever could and tells you how to do it. I am sure some of you will enjoy reading it.
https://expertphotography.com/using-foc ... correctly/

[mvc]

Thanks for the tip, will certainly try this out soon!

[CK]

If you have a camera with manual mode, you can use a small aperture with a longer shutter time to get a bigger depth of field. Most likely, you will need a tripod to do that. I use F/22 or F/25 on my Canon in full manual mode.

This way is faster but is not as sharp for every part depending on you camera focal length. A shorter focal length the better.

[PeteJ]

That is the standard way to adjust the depth of field for a single shot. My a7II does that very well, but by using the spot focus and shooting 4 or 5 shots with the spots on different parts of the model and stitch them together with stacking, I get a photo which has a greater depth of field than I could ever get with a single photo except with the aperture stopped way down and extremally long shutter times. It also allows me to use a faster shutter speed/wider aperture so there is less chance of shake. This means I may not need a tripod. One less piece of equipment to drag around, especially when shooting at a show with less than ideal lighting. It really adds flexibility to the process and since it costs nothing to shoot multiple photos(unlike in the old days of film) it is a useful tool.