Handheld stacking - or just take the picture?

[SteveB]

The weather has been good for butterflies recently and I have been able to photograph at least four species that I had never seen before. Most of them have been at a place I have found at the top of the Magaliesberg which just seems to have more insect action than the surrounding areas.

It's about four kilometers from our plot and the first part is very steep and overgrown, but when you get there it feels as though the place has real "magic".

I had been wondering recently if stacking was really worth the extra effort. Here are some pictures.


A personal first for me, a Pearl spotted Charaxes at F 5.6 no stack

Here is a close relative, a Foxy Charaxes. They have a perch they prefer and very aggressively defend their "territory" by flying up and even bumping intruders so hard that you can hear the impact!


F 7.1 @ 150 mm no stack

A Pale ranger in it's natural pose

F 5.6 no stack 60 mm

I really like butterfly photos where you can see both the underside and the upper side of the wings, but if you focus on the eyes the wingtips can be very out of focus. It doesn't always matter, but I think one often wants the whole insect sharp.

A Natal bar

Handheld stack F 4

Finally a Bushveld scarlet, also a first for Me.



Handheld stack F 4

I think stacking definitely has it's place.

[gardenersassistant]

Nice set. Good to have access to somewhere with a good variety of subjects.

As to whether stacking is worth it (with subjects out in the field, which all of mine are), for me it is definitely worth it for flowers and other botanical subject matter. I can get results that I like which are not possible with single shots. So I use a mixture of stacks and singles, with the emphasis on stacks at the moment.

For invertebrates, I have mixed feelings. I do like to have plenty in focus, but for that I use minimum aperture, and by sticking with single shot captures I can be more responsive in the field with subjects that are often on the move (or on something that is blowing around in the breezy conditions we often have here) or only still for a few seconds, and are mostly smaller than butterflies and flowers (flies, wasps, bees and similar sized creatures, down to occasional springtails, barkflies and similar smaller subjects).

I think stacking gets more difficult as the subjects get smaller, the more so given the movement issues. I have seen some wonderful stacks of live subjects in the field, some as small as springtails, but I don't know that I have the skill level to achieve that. I am intending to give stacking another go for invertebrates, but it is quite low on my agenda.

[MarkSturtevant]

Very interesting subjects, and also a subject very much on my mind too. I come from a different direction since I have never done stacking, and am wondering if I should give it a go. But my preference is shooting in the field, and so stacking would be extra challenging.
There is a kind of compromise, which I use fairly frequently when I think of it, which is to take single frame pictures at f/10 or f/11 at different focal points of the insect subject. This makes it pretty likely that parts of the subject will not be in focus, while the background is softly out of focus. I then hand stitch the insect together from these pictures to get a picture where the subject in in complete focus.
More work than just a single picture, but probably a lot less work than a 'real' stack. Here is an example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/87421607@ ... /lightbox/
It took maybe an hour in post-processing to get the picture I wanted. Sometimes it takes longer.

[Susan Smitha]

Great capture. Those wings are incredible!