Macro Set-up for Focus Stacking
I have been fascinated by Macro ever since I started digital photography, partly because it takes you to places you wouldn’t normally go and shows you things that you wouldn’t normally see. After my first successful attempts at Macro Photography, I spent a great deal of time reading a lot about it and experimenting with different set-ups, in order to see how close I can get using the equipment available on the market and keeping the post-processing relatively simple. During that quest the word that was constantly coming up is ‘focus stacking’ and, as most Macro photographers would agree, in order to achieve very good results you will need to learn how to stack exposures at some point of your Macro exploration. This post will describe different kinds of Macro set-ups I have personally tested and discuss both their pros and cons. Finally, I will describe a set-up I’m currently using, which produces images you can see below.
HDR Vertical Panorama
The basics behind capturing and stitching a HDR vertorama / tiltorama are almost the same as an equirectangular panorama. The only difference is that a vertorama / tiltorama represents a vertical field of view. If you are new to this kind of photography, please familiarise yourself with my previous posts: Vertical Panorama, Equirectangular Panorama and HDR Panorama to get an overview of HDR and panoramic photography.
HDR Panorama
Ever since I started developing a strong interest in panoramic photography, I also became interested in exploring HDR photography. One day these two finally came together and I decided to capture my first genuine HDR equirectangular panorama. It was not easy but I got there eventually and I’d like to share my thoughts with other panoramic and HDR photography enthusiasts. This post will guide you through the process of capturing a genuine HDR equirectangular panorama and will discuss the issues related to both the equipment as well as workflow. If you are not familiar with panoramic or HDR photography, please read my previous posts: Equirectangular Panorama and HDR from a single RAW
Stacking Long Exposures in Photoshop
I had an idea recently and was wondering what would happen if I stacked several long exposures in Photoshop. The result can be seen below. This picture was stacked from 20 exposures and I have to say it looks really good. So, what are you waiting for? Take several long exposures, capturing car lights or other moving light sources, open all of them in Photoshop and then stack all the layers together. Unfortunately, you will have to blend the layers individually, working on two images at a time. Select one image and then place another on top of it. Then, select the layer you want to blend in the ‘Layers Tab’ on the left, right-click on it, go to ‘Blending Options’, select ‘Lighten’ from the ‘Blending Mode’ menu and voila! Just continue stacking the layers until you get the desired effect. If you are completely new to long exposure photography please read my post on Long Exposure Photography – Capturing Car Lights.
Thanks for reading and good luck with your photography.
Please read the ‘About’ section for copyright information.
Shutter Experiments 