Hi grphotog641 - sometimes less is more. I'm nor sure if the picture would have the same effect if would render it as a stack. The blurry background is really nice. I like it.
Thanks, Helix. This past weekend I finished my homemade speedlight diffuser and finally feel like I can shoot in the wild. Without the flash I was having to shoot at really wide apertures and the resulting ultra-narrow DOF made me feel like focus stacking was my only option. This feels really liberating and I'm looking forward to working on some flower shots I took in the garden yesterday.
Now I may need to upgrade my speedlight to one that gives me a bit more control.
I prefer to take my stacks without an external flash but I saw a lot of pictures taken with a flash light which are really gorgeous. So I'm thinking about to buy a flash light for myself to use it for my stacks. But I'm not sure which one to buy. The DIY is also a very intersting topic!
At the end focus stacking is the only possible physical solution if you want to get all details of the flower. I won't recommend to use an aperature above f16 to avoid diffraction blur.
I've been doing my stacking using a static LED worklight and relying on the flicker-reduction on my D500 to deal with the 60Hz flicker (very obvious on my D750 body).
That usually gives me enough light to shoot not-quite wide open, even with the tubes and the Raynox.
But outside, handheld, there was nowhere near enough light for me to get a decent shot without the flash. Good advice on not going to high in f-number. I'll try to remember that.
this picture has a dreamy look to it. i like the details in the centre and the dof fall off in the edges. stacking seems too artificial to me sometimes. Great Photo!