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Updated February 16, 2023

ControlMyNikon

The DSLR Automation Tool

Now supports Windows 11 !

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Focus Stacking. Always interesting, and a great way to spice up those pix where you just can’t get enough Depth of Field with one shot. And it’s easy as…well it’s just easy.

The TL;DR: Creating a focus stack of a rock, as shown in this new tutorial video.

Enter Exhibit A: A Rock. You may also call this a mineral, but technically it consists of Iron Pyrite and Quartz so ‘Rock’ may be the correct thing to call it. It is wonderfully shiny.

So let’s take a shot at f8, which is a nice and sharp aperture on the D8100 and 105mm Macro I used for this shot. Check out the depth of field. Only some parts of the rock are in focus, and a lot of it are out of focus. This will not do.

In ControlMyNikon, we’ll use the Focus Stacking workflow in live view to capture 25 images at f8, and ControlMyNikon will move the focus a bit between each shot. Then we’ll send these images out to Zerene Stacker for processing to create the final stacked image, which, after a bit of tweaking looks like this.

Check out the video showing how this was done. Also check out the nifty axial lighting setup I 3D printed just for shooting objects like this. Fun stuff!

https://youtu.be/ml4I218wyzY