In today’s article I want to share a tutorial video, in which I show you how to use focus stacking in landscape photography. I show you both my in the field technique and my post processing workflow in Photoshop.
But first things first: what exactly is focus stacking and why do I use it? In landscape photography, when I want to get a dynamic composition, I often try to get very close to the foreground elements in the frame. Normally, if I want to increase the depth of field in order to get everything sharp in such a situation, what I could to do is to use smaller apertures.
But even using the smallest available aperture often isn’t enough. And if it was, using it would have a negative effect on the overall sharpness and might be counterproductive to the sharp photo I want to achieve.
The reason for this is the so called diffraction, which causes photos taken with too small apertures to look softer and less detailed than photos taken at apertures between f/5.6 and f/11 for example. To get a good compromise between depth of field and overall sharpness l usually stick to f/9.5 or f/11.
Once the depth of field I get by using those apertures isn't enough for the scene at hand, I simply take multiple photos and shift the focus between each of them. This is called focus stacking. In the video below I go a bit more into the details and also show more examples.
As you can see, focus stacking isn’t very complicated. But once there are moving elements in the frame it can get tricky. I can try to bump up the ISO and perform the stacking as fast as possible. But it’s very likely that the moving elements in the photos will not align perfectly and the blending will be very hard and might require some additional cloning work.
In such cases it might be better to use a smaller aperture. It’s a compromise, but it’s better to get a photo of medium sharpness than no photo at all.
An alternative would be the use of a Tilt-Shift lens. Such lenses allow to extend the area of sharpness in a photo by tilting the focal plane. But such lenses aren’t cheap and they also have their limits.
In the end the most important thing is, as with all new techniques, to practice. While in the beginning focus stacking might slow you down a bit, over time it will become a nearly subconscious action. And it will free you from the decision of where to focus because you are taking multiple photos with different focus anyway.
But enough talk. Now it’s time for you to head out and take some photos :-)