When focus stacking fails

In camera focus stacking on Olympus/OM systems bodies is wonderful.  Providing that:

• the subject remains still
• the camera remains still
• the initial focus point is correctly chosen

Get any of these slightly wrong and at worst the stack completely fails in camera, at best the result is some ghosting that can be edited in Lightroom using the Generative AI remove tool after stacking in Photoshop.

But occasionally the OM stacking algorithm throws a wobbly and actually manages to complete a stack.in camera when it shouldn't.  Is it trying to create it's own art?  Take this example:

Painted lady butterfly on Eryngium

Five handheld stacked images of the butterfly at 1/1250sec all overlaid on a still image of the Eryngium it's feeding on. The subject moved but the stack was still generated.  Motion blur without the motion blur.

A little while later I was shooting a pair of  Azure damselflies.  They tend to stay fairly motionless during the egg laying process and I used focus stacking to increase the apparent depth of field and get both male and female reasonably sharp.  Then they took off...

...and what I actually got was this:

Focus stacking failure I'm very familiar with.  I stack, see the orange failure message and try again.  But this is not just failure, it's spectacular failure.  One to play with perhaps.

 

 400mm portraiture

I take a lot of images of my own and my daughter's dogs.  Sighthounds are very photogenic when they're running or playing.  But rarely would I take a portrait shot at the full 400mm reach of my OM systems 100-400mm Mk II.  Particularly wide open at the f6.3 and ISO 1600 settings that I use on my OM-1 for the action shots.  Why bother when you can easily get closer, shoot at lower ISO to cut noise and close down the lens for greater depth of field.

But sometimes you work with what you've got.  And that shows you how good or bad your lens is pushed to it's limits.  So, how good is the 100-400mm handheld with the above parameters?

This is Sam, my daughter's greyhound x deerhound longdog.  He specialises in exhausting high speed runs followed by prolonged resting far in the distance.

Here's a 100% crop of his face.

Just to repeat the exercise here's another full scale shot,,,

...and the crop.

Three things come out of this.

1. Animal eye detection works on the OM-1
2. 400mm wide open on the 100-400mm MkII is sharp
3. The isolation and out of focus blur (bokeh) at 400mm produces excellent portraits

No wonder this relatively inexpensive (compared to lenses with similar reach in both m43m, APS-C and full frame formats) is proving popular among we budget limited photographers.  Though I wouldn't recommend it is a daily portrait lens for ordinary portraiture.