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Do you prefer using low, mid, or high apertures for focus stacking?

Started Mar 14, 2018 | Polls thread
Bill Janes Senior Member • Posts: 2,042
Re: Do you prefer using low, mid, or high apertures for focus stacking?
2

mawyatt2002 wrote:

Your effective aperture (EA) is the magnification +1 times the lens aperture, so as said above diffraction can begin to degrade the IQ. Like most things it becomes tradeoff between DoF and Diffraction. I do lots of extreme stacking (sometimes ~600), mostly with microscope objectives for high magnifications, and the EA tends to hang around 18~20. These lenses don't have selectable apertures, so you get the EA the lenses was designed around.

Best,

As Mike notes, it is important to keep the EA in mind if you are doing close up and macro. At m = 1 you loose 2 f/stops so f/11 becomes f/22, well into the diffraction limited range. Nikon chipped lenses give the effective aperture and Canon and most others give the nominal f/stop.

In close up and macro, it is often desirable to have the background out of focus, and a large aperture (smaller f/number) will help blur the background as will a longer focal length lens. In macro, the depth of field at a given magnification is independent of focal length, but the background will be magnified more and have a less apparent depth of field with a longer lens.

IMHO, an intermediate aperture is optimal in most situations. Open up for smoother backgrounds at the cost of more shots, and close down for fewer shots in the stack.

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Bill Janes

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