Pretty moth, stacked a lot

A cute and colourful moth visited my place today. It was very patient (exhausted from trying to fly through glass?), I picked it up with my finger and put it on the balcony table for the photo-session and managed a couple of stacks of it before it finally flew away.

All shots with 5DmkII, Sigma 150mm or MP-E 65mm, stacked in Helicon Focus. I tried a couple of f22 and f32 shots also, while being useless apertures on their own, due to diffraction, they come in handy when stacking since the areas that need to be super-sharp (eyes, mouth-parts) can be taken with f8 and thereabouts.

Love frames 2 and 4, Eyvind. Very nice.

Kenny

#2 looks best to me. Very nice shots.

Mark

Beautiful and enjoyable macro photos, with a different character than most other photos of such subjects.

The technique of selectively adding an intentionally soft frame at f32 is an interesting option for one's focus stacking toolbox. Thanks for providing a summary of your successful uses.

As best I can understand this technique, it would provide a method of *selectively* adding in an appropriate amount of somewhat blurred background or perhaps a section of a critter. It's remarkable how much added artistic and technical flexibility digital photography adds to one's reasonably accessible options. Freedom to be more creative and to add dimensions to one's photographic art is delightful when executed as shown in your photos.

How would this compare to building a maximum detail stack and then selectively blurring the region of interest in Photoshop? My intuitive guess is that your technique may cause some types of focus stacks to become less difficult and aesthetically more pleasing.

Great shots and stack! Esp like #2!
kurt

Thanks much for commenting, Mark, DQE, and Kurt!

DQE also thanks for sharing your own thoughts on the technique used. I'm pretty happy with how the blended f16, f22, and f32 shots came out. It's a refreshing change from my other f10 MP-E shots, with the areas OOF, totally blurred

Lovely series Evyind - often thought about using a small aperture shot at the beginning and end of a focus stack series - does help smooth out the rather abrupt DOF borders you get otherwise
Brian V

great series of shots

Thanks for your comments, Brian and Michael! I guess it'd be slightly harder to change aperture while stacking hand-held, Brian, but certainly not impossible.

good series, #2 looks best to me
phil