John & Maria's Photography Pages

 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.