![]() Once you’re happy with the composition of your shot, the last thing left to do is find your focus. Once you’re content with your settings, carry on. Do this whichever way works for you, but don’t worry about the focus just yet. Now, take some time to adjust settings like ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Mainly when shooting macro images (a common reason to pursue focus stacking), movement from the touch of your hand on the camera body can be magnified in the shot, disrupting the clarity you’re looking for. ![]() The remote shutter release minimizes the effects of vibration that might make their way into your photos. Keeping your camera steady on a tripod will ensure that your images remain as similar as possible, aside from the manual changes you will make to focus. Set up your shot with a tripod and a remote shutter release To prepare the images you’ll need for focus stacking: 1. Without proper field technique, you likely won’t be successful in merging your photos at a later time. While merging photos-the final step of focus stacking that allows you to achieve perfect focus throughout your scene-is completed during post-processing, the act of focus stacking begins in the field. We like to say that the best way to understand a technique thoroughly is to try it out for yourself, so of course, we weren’t going to leave you without a tutorial about how you can use focus stacking in your photography! In the Field Similarly, macro photographers love focus stacking, because the small depth of field afforded to most macro lenses makes it difficult to achieve proper focus across the entirety of photos.įocus stacking allows these photographers to artificially expand the area that appears in-focus without increasing their depth of field. For this reason, landscape photographers often utilize focus stacking to ensure that the clarity of their shot is spot-on from foreground to background and everything in between. Due to the vast distance between the foreground and background in many landscape shots, achieving a shot that’s free from pesky blurring can be quite the challenge (if not impossible). However, focus stacking is particularly prevalent in landscape photography. Because of its crisp, clean, and focused results, photographers from all niches can find a way to use this technique to bolster their photographs. Image by Chris Heald When to Use Focus Stackingįocus stacking is widely applicable throughout several photography genres. This yields a single image that is focused throughout. When we load similar images, programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Classic can merge them into a single picture that includes the sharpest, most in-focus parts of each photograph. This puts many photographers in a bind.įocus stacking utilizes technology that we may not even know we had-it’s right at our fingertips, housed within our favorite photo editing software. However, increasing the aperture too much will lead to image diffraction, which counters the added sharpness achieved by the greater depth of field. In their search for images that are focused throughout the scene, many photographers may increase the aperture to increase the depth of field. Of course, focus stacking often involves many more than two pictures!įocus stack of 76 images, by Gilles San Martin How Does Focus Stacking Work? Image by Rafael Vianna Croffi What Is Focus Stacking?įocus stacking is a photo editing technique that allows us to achieve impressively sharp focus throughout an image when doing so in-camera is impossible.įocus stacking is the practice of taking multiple shots of the same subject, adjusting only the focus each time, then merging these shots in post.Īt its simplest, focus stacking is taking two images – one of which is perfectly focused in the foreground with the other having perfect focus in the background – and combining them into a single image so that focus is ideal throughout. When nailing focus with a camera alone seems impossible, many photographers turn to one of their favorite techniques – focus stacking. Unfortunately, achieving this kind of stunning focus throughout an entire image can prove immensely tricky with only in-camera focusing techniques, particularly when shooting landscape or macro photos. It’s no wonder that we often agonize over making sure that our photos are as focused as possible! The visual power of a crisp, in-focus image can draw us into a photograph and make us feel like we’re a part of it.
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