Posted April 30th, 2020

Amethyst

Before the COVID-19 lockdown prematurely ended our photography club’s meeting season last month, I presented an instructional session on the subject of focus stacking to the club, followed by a hands on practice session of the technique at our next and final meeting. Focus stacking is a method of increasing the “depth of field” in an image by making a series of exposures with a small change of focus between each, and then combining them in software. I stacked 32 exposures in Photoshop to create this image of an amethyst specimen. The close-up magnification, full frame sensor size, and medium aperture of f/8 are all factors that combined to produce a very shallow depth of sharp focus in each exposure. Without focus stacking I would not have been able to produce this image with the entire specimen sharp.
Pentax K-1, Kiron 105mm f/2.8 macro, f/8, ISO 200