Which lenses for focus stacking ?

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Sunny

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I got the video workshop for focus stacking. Very nice and I learned a few things.

What I'm missing is a discussion about lenses. What I noticed is that older lenses such as the 105macro is not very good on higher resolution camera's like the D850 and Z7.

I found the best lens amongst my possesions is the 300PF.
Why? Because there is not ghosting visible after stacking.

Perhaps it has something to do with focus breathing. What are your thoughts?
What about the steps? Will smaller steps reduce ghosting or will larger apertures reduce ghosting or a combination thereof? Any idea's?

Cheers,

Sunny
 
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Thanks for the purchase. :)

For the most part, any lens is actually fine. The ghosting isn't from the lens, it's from the overlap of the out of focus regions. I talk about that during both the macro field video and the post-processing steps, but it's basically a physics problem. If an area that's currently sharp is being blocked by the blur of a foreground object, that blur is covering the sharp area. In short, you're not capturing the information in that area due to a physical blockage.

My guess is the reason the 105 seems worse is because you're using it at closer range and the you tend to see more blur expansion among the foreground elements. That's one of the reasons I recommend racking the focus on a macro subject - it allows you to see both what will and won't be included in the frame as well as if any of that foreground blur is going to get out of hand and block another area too much. The trick is to compose to minimize it.
 
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Dear Steve,

Thanks for your reply.

Do you remember the frog in your video workshop?
In the beginning there was on the top of the frog lots of ghosting. Were there out of focus objects in front of it?
What was the origin of these ghostings?
I've seen the same ghostings in some of my pictures. After I used a small focus stack on the Z7 (<2) with a 300mm PF and a subject that was close to the lens, f/4 I did not see any ghosting anymore.

Ghosting visible: 85mm f/2.5
2019-10-04 00-15-59 (C,Smoothing2)-2.jpg
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with 300mm PF f/4. no ghosting, stack in photoshop, no serious retouching:
_N711462.jpg
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That's actually pretty common with close focus stacks. That ghosting is caused by the blur I mentioned earlier (although in this case it's not a blockage - as yo mention in your first post, there could be a touch of focus breathing here too). At some point during he shoot, the edges with the ghosting were out of focus. When the software stacked, some of the areas have some artifacts (ghosting) because of it. That's where you need to use the retouching tools to correct it and use just a single image for the background - or in this case, two images. I'd use the sharp stalk one and the sharp back of the mushroom cap for the background. It's similar to what you saw in the flower retouching demo when I cleaned up the background and halos.

Also, I'm not sure what software you're stacking with, but trying a different stacking method and adjustments may clean some of that up as well. Each image is different and it's tough to tell exactly what settings work best just by looking. It's one of those things you have to play with.
 
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In Affinity Photo you can deal with this problem by manually selecting a different source image for a specific area. Say you stack 20 images, and the slice between 300mm and 320mm (distance from the lens when shooting) comes mostly from image 12. If one part of the image is blurred, or blocked, you can mask that and use image 11 or 13 instead. That tends to fix most of these problems-although I’m no expert having used this techniques only a few times.
 
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JP Onstwedder said:
In Affinity Photo you can deal with this problem by manually selecting a different source image for a specific area. Say you stack 20 images, and the slice between 300mm and 320mm (distance from the lens when shooting) comes mostly from image 12. If one part of the image is blurred, or blocked, you can mask that and use image 11 or 13 instead. That tends to fix most of these problems-although I’m no expert having used this techniques only a few times.
Click to expand...
That's similar to what you can do with the retouching tools in Helicon and Zerene. It's cool that Affinity has the option as well.
 
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Focus stacking is very new to me and a new technique to explore. I am intirgued by the images but the equipment I see in some videos is a bit much for me to construct. I think I will stick to more basis 10 to 20 frame stacks and start the learning curve with one of Steve's EXCELLENT tutorials. So much to learn and enjoy, all I heed is more time. Could Steve find a way to create the 40 hour day?
 
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