A Focus Stacking Story…

I haven’t done macro photography for some time. Most recently I did use some extension tubes with the 12-200mm lens to do some macro photography, but it is not the best solution. 

This past week I bought the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens on sale from B&H Photo. It’s a very nice small, lightweight lens. I’m having fun trying to figure out how best to use it.

It is the only lens I have that is compatible with the OM-1 in-camera focus stacking. So I thought I’d give it a try after watching a couple of YouTube videos on the subject. Ideally you should use a tripod, but if you’re steady, you can hand hold the camera to produce the in-camera focus stack.

This morning I tried the in-camera focus stack feature. The camera creates 15 jpeg images at different focus points and stacks them into a single focus stacked image.

Looking at the stacked image on the camera’s screen, I was not happy with the result.

In-Camera Focus Stack

As you can see, the bottom third of the photograph is clearly not in focus. Now I thought that it could be because it was hand held or that the settings I used were not correct.

I then used Affinity Photo and imported the same 15 separate images and used Affinity’s focus stacking feature and wow, what a difference.

Affinity Photo Focus Stack

I’ll have to do some more testing, but it looks like Affinity Photo is how I should be processing my focus stacked image.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“