While hiking the nearby prairie meadow the other morning, I came upon a wonderful subject for using the focus-stacking technique, a thistle in full bloom. With all the nooks and crannies of this lovely wildflower, focus-stacking was a good choice to capture most all of the flower in focus, while still keeping the background out-of-focus. I sat up my tripod and captured 16 images, which I later combined in Helicon Focus software:
Moving the tripod just a bit, as well as a little closer to the flower, to capture a slightly different view, I captured 23 images which I later combined (Helicon Software) into this image:
This little wildflower grants us a wonderful eyeful of purple, which is quite a treat on an early fall morning!
Photographic Equipment Used:
- Canon 5D Mark 3 body
- Canon EF180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
- Bogen 3221 tripod with Graff Studioball SB-QR ballhead
- ISO 800 (top photo) and ISO 200 (bottom photo) … noticed the ISO was at 800, after the first captures (it had been windy earlier), so moved it to ISO 200 for bottom captures
- Aperture f/8 (top photo) and f/3.5 (bottom photo)
- Shutter 1/30 sec. (top photo) and Shutter 1/60 sec. (bottom photo)