When stopping down simply isn’t enough, focus stack your landscape photos

 

 

We have been covering new episodes of Dave Morrow's "Landscape Photography Journals" for a few weeks now and he has released a new video about his focus stacking technique.

Focus stacking is an excellent technique for landscape and macro photographers to learn in particular because it allows you to produce images with more depth of field than would be possible with a single image. Focus stacking works by capturing successive images with your focus distance set to different amounts. In the case of macro photography, you might take dozens of images with very slightly different focus distances because the depth of field when shooting a close subject is so thin. With landscape photography, the demands are different as your subjects are often further away and you typically use a wide lens. For example, when I focus stack landscape images, I often only need three to eight images to create my final shot.

In landscape photography, you can often focus in the distance and stop down your lens. However, if you want a close foreground element or if you are using a longer lens, you may not be able to stop down enough to have everything in your frame be reasonably sharp. Further, you don't necessarily want to stop down very far with lenses on a high-resolution sensor, which can bring down the best - and worst - qualities of your lens. To see Morrow's focus stacking workflow in the field and on his computer, watch his video below.

To see more of Dave Morrow's work, visit his website and subscribe to his YouTube channel.

(Via Dave Morrow)