We visited a local nature reserve today we hadn't been to before, driven past lots of times and intended to go back so today we did.
The sun came out and there were beautiful wild flowers, insects, birds and butterflies everywhere, it was a fab place to spend the day.
This is a common blue butterfly pair that sat here for quite a while so I thought I'd try a focus stack. I think it's worked out ok compared to the individual shots, pretty easy to process in Photoshop too :)
hmmm. focus stacking being quite easy in ps?! i wonder if i would find it so. must give it a try. how delightful to find these two beauties together. wonderfully captured. i've managed to photograph one before and was surprised to find that they're just called a 'common blue' when they are so daintily spectacular!
What a spectacular image. I'm interested in the details of the focus stacking. I am familiar with this technique for macro photography. You move your focal plane by tiny bits--like millimeters--and take the pieces that are in focus. I can't imagine that you did that with live animals in a public location. Care to share some details?
@pistache really easy. Once you've taken your photos open PS, click on File - Scripts - Load files into stack and browse to find the photos on your computer. Then just sit back and wait for ps to do its magic. If you auto align it will show you the finished image all neat and tidy but as I didn't use a tripod I had to crop out the untidy bits around the edges. But no big deal, then a few bits of editing and it was done :)
@tdaug80 thank you.I was lucky to see the butterflies land on the plant and then kept my distance so I didn't disturb them. I took the first photo and the butterfly on the left was in focus so took another to get the one on the right in focus in the hope that I could combine them when I got home. The butterflies still hadn't moved so I took a few more, about 20 I think in total, moving the focal point for each one, just to see how it would turn out. I didn't have my tripod with me so it wasn't set up for a macro shot and the alignment of the photos was far from perfect. But there was plenty of space around them so just cropped the final image. I used 10 images in the stacking so it didn't take too long to process, I was happy with the result so that's what you see here :) I'll probably do it again with all the images just to compare the difference.
Still haven't seen a CB this year but there's still lots of time.
Wonderful shot of this happy couple. Focus stacking adds so much to an image - easier if your camera does it for you LOL!
j
Wonderful shot of this happy couple. Focus stacking adds so much to an image - easier if your camera does it for you LOL!
j