A few shots using focus bracketing on the R5 + RF 100-500

The Zentone wrote:

Can you explain more about your process in taking these shots? You talk about 20 shots in a short period of time till the butterfly goes away.

Correct, with Focus Bracketing the whole point is to get as many shots as needed with different focus points moving through the subject.  This allows you to take multiple pictures, each with a fairly narrow depth-of-field, and combine them into an image with a larger depth-of-field.  For still subjects you can take as much time as you want, and as many pictures as you want.  For subjects like butterflies, well, you can only take as many pictures as they'll let you.  Anything from a breeze moving them or the leaf, to another butterfly dive-bombing them can basically interrupt the whole process or "ruin" the entire stack of images as the subject needs to remain as still as possible.  The nice thing about the R5 (and R7 which I also use for this) is that they take between 20-30 shots per second so you usually don't need too much time to get the shots.  It usually takes me longer to line everything up and compose the shot as it does to take them all.

When I do this I set my focus to One Shot focus with a single focus point.  I focus on the main part of the subject I want (usually the head/eye), lock focus and then move the camera back slightly until the initial point I want in focus like a leaf or leg looks good, hold still and hit the shutter button.  The camera will take the 20+ shots.  If I can take a couple more I will because it only takes one or two shots from the stack to mess up the whole merge.

It's not easy, and it is time consuming, but with the right shot it can really make a difference.  It doesn't always work well and you need to understand what kind of shots do well with stacking, and ones that don't, but if you try it out enough you'll see what those are.