Your depth of field just won’t be deep enough, and only parts of the shot will turn out sharp (while other parts will turn blurry). Specifically, you’ll run into depth of field problems when working with: And if you’re faced by a standard close-up subject such as a flower, you can back up slightly from your subject and narrow your aperture to get your desirable depth of field.īut in a few situations, you won’t be able to achieve a deep enough depth of field to keep the entire shot sharp (from the nearest foreground element to the most distant background element). If you’re faced by a sweeping landscape, you can choose a wide-angle lens and you can narrow your aperture that way, you can capture the entire scene in focus using a deep depth of field. In most situations, you can handle your depth of field requirements without focus stacking. On the other hand, as you widen your lens, move away from your subject, or narrow your lens aperture, the amount of the scene that’s in focus will increase.

So as you zoom your lens, move closer to your subject, or widen your lens aperture, the amount of the scene that’s in focus will decrease. Now, if you’re familiar with camera optics, you’ll know that the depth of field is affected by three key factors: In other words, focus stacking is only necessary if you’re faced with a scene that can’t be well handled by your camera setup’s current depth of field capabilities. When should you focus stack your photos?įocus stacking is designed to overcome the limits of depth of field. Note that focusing stacking doesn’t require fancy equipment, either you can focus stack with a standard camera (even a smartphone camera, in fact), though I do recommend you work with a tripod and a manual focus lens if you can, as I discuss in a moment. You blend the images to achieve a final file that features a sharp foreground, a sharp middleground, and a sharp background.You take several images of a scene, making sure to focus on each part (i.e., the foreground, the middleground, and the background).

While the concepts may sound tricky, the basic process is very simple:

Photo stacking in photoshop