Is the Fuji 80mm lens good for focus stacking

[machoman]

Do you know of any inherent issues using the Fuji 80mm for focus stacking ? Some reports says it has quite a lot of focus breathing.

I tried it out over the weekend and all my shots have artifacts - the main body of the flower came out nicely but the stems where there's small hair growing out - they are multiplied, like repeated - like doubling up. Any suggestions - i'm quite worried this is not going to work out well.

Previously my attempts with Helicon were near perfect, not needing any touch-ups using the Fuji 60. Albeit with that lens the closest i could go was half size.

[Catherine]

That's an alignment issue. Try a couple different parameter combinations with the method B, try method C (with two or three different Smoothing values). Try increasing the "Adjust vertically/horizontally/scale" values in Preferences - Autoadjustments, but if it doesn't help then return back to the defaults as having them increased may be detrimental.

However, on a second thought, since you said that the main body is good, means it was aligned correctly. Note that the images are aligned as a whole, one full image against another. We can't cut the image into pieces and align the pieces individually. Hence, it sounds like the hairs that are misaligned might have been moving between the photos, and there's no fix for that (apart from re-shooting). After rendering the stack, use the Page Up/Page Down buttons to scroll through the source images, and look at the area of the source image where the problem occurs. It should be very easy to spot any movement and see why it couldn't be aligned.

[machoman]

Thanks Catherine. FYI - there's no wind - it's in my garage with LED lighting - so it's perfectly still. I'll provide some photos later...still experimenting.

Pls see attached - any tips on how to prevent the halos ?

And also some of the small stems are crossing each other - what can i do about it.

The attached is a 303 images shot - from the tip of the yellow petals to the back of the small stems....Do you think that even with Focus stacking, we should not be greedy - isn't it still better to prioritize what's important and let the less important stuff go....then helicon can produce a better image of the important parts of the image....just my thoughts.

Because i could have just kept the front portion of the flower to be sharp- and not include the back petals...but i got greedy and selected everything to be sharp.Now the small leaves at the right are crossing each other and it's creating a halo and it looks hard to touch up something like that to keep both front and back leaves sharp.

[Catherine]

Pls see attached - any tips on how to prevent the halos ?

Try increasing the radius (examples in the guide on focus stacking parameters). Also try different methods.

And also some of the small stems are crossing each other - what can i do about it.

Use the retouching function. Sometimes you will discover that there is no image that contains the detail you wanted it, in other words, it might not be a software issue at all. In that case shoot with less focus breathing or larger depth of field (e. g. with a narrower aperture).

isn't it still better to prioritize what's important and let the less important stuff go

Maybe, especially if there are reasons why the stack can't be well-formed across all of the frame. But if it is at all possible to stack it, then there should be no issues (or minor, easily retouchable issues). Follow the recommendations from my previous post and see if you can fix your stack, or if there's a fundamental problem with it.

[el48tel]

Had a similar alignment problem with different lenses ... and also with taking shots of flowers on long exposure (20 seconds plus) ... and with multiple shots over short time periods for subsequent reassembly in IR and UV.
It might not be the lens focus which is breathing. It might be the plant which is breathing. Petals and flower parts .... move continuously.