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Photo#274419
Field Stack - Habronattus americanus - male

Field Stack - Habronattus americanus - Male
Port Williams Beach, Sequim, Clallam County, Washington, USA
May 9, 2009
I'm posting this image for two reasons:
First, on revisiting Port Williams beach, I photographed three male H. americanus, and one possible female H. americanus. In my very limited experience, that seems like a population of this species in this location.

Second, for some time I've been wanting to try out focus stacking of field photos, similar to the procedure used in lab photos, just to see if it'd be a useful technique.
This image is a stack of four consecutive photos taken in the field with a live and active spider under natural light. I was using the continuous-shooting setting on my Nikon Coolpix S10. I usually keep it set on continuous and almost always shoot several at a time. Unless I'm resting the camera firmly on a rock, I always find slight differences in focal plane due to inadvertent camera movement. I've also worked on developing the habit of moving the camera deliberately a few millimeters away from the subject as I shoot, especially if I'm shooting from above when the subject is on a flat surface. The camera has a tendency to focus on the substrate instead of the subject's eyes.
I used Helicon Focus software to stack the images, but I suspect any stacking software would work.
The software seems to do an excellent job of adjusting for slight differences in position.
You can see a tiny bit of stacking artifact in the out-of-focus part of this cropped image in the upper right. In the uncropped image, there's clear stacking artifact in the out-of-focus parts of the image.

I like focus stacking
Nice job with the focus stacking. I have been reading about it and it sure looks intriguing. It's great that you can use it with handheld shots. What is your verdict on it so far?

 
Focus Stacking
As you'd expect, the best results will come from a system that produces the lowest geometric change from shot to shot. And good optics, good lighting and a rock solid mount will always help.

But doing focus stacking on the cheap seems to work sometimes, and that may produce some excellent results. I have had some usefully improved results from a small number of field photos and some excellent results from studio photos with my very cheap system:



Maybe the best choice would be to buy Photoshop CS4, if that's in the cards anyway. I haven't upgraded, but I understand 4 does focus stacking.

But barring that, Helicon Focus seems worthwhile, and is very easy to use.

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