We're just starting to get spiders here in NE Ohio. There are frequently one or more on the back door of the apartment and on the garage doors, but every time I have the time to take pictures, the weather changes. Last week it was in the '70s on one day, and then it snowed Friday. This weekend, I'll...

I would place the subject on a slightly rough surface, such as paper towel. See for example the setup shown in http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2796#2796 , for the image shown earlier in that thread and also (stereo) at http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1835...

Last night I started a stack of 111 images. The 1/8" gnat subject was perfectly aligned, and it looked like it was going to turn out great. It took a long time for CombineZP to process the images. When it was done, it looked AWFUL, which really puzzled me. However looking at the individual images, I...

I followed your advice and got MUCH better results. I'm not going to post the picture because, although the stack was good, the image was bad. It was an old specimen and it had deteriorated badly. I'm going to get a fresh specimen. On the previous failed stack, some of the colors were marvelous, alm...

The usual solution is to move the endpoints farther out, so that even with backlash and focusing errors you get everything you need, plus some more on the ends that you don't. Often those are automatically ignored by the focus stacking algorithm. If they aren't, you can manually exclude them from p...

Now that I've got my: CombineZP - Bizarre, one off CombineZP and Windows compatibility settings. camera mounting - Home made mount fixed to shooting table. CFL lighting - 85w CFLs on articulated arm lamps with flower pot reflectors. flash lighting - DSLR Controller set to five second exposure interv...

I regularly make my cheap Yongnuo flashes do 700-800 consecutive flashes 6-8 seconds apart. Sometimes running these stacks repeatedly all day. They are fine. They are at 1/32 power or less. I use an external battery pack to get them through the stack. What are you using to control the camera(s)? I ...

It's a beautiful image.

How many images were stacked?

I ask because DSLR Controller sometimes chooses seventy or more exposures. I'm using continuous lighting because I'm not terribly inclined to cook my good Sigma flash with 77 consecutive actuations.

A second stack, this time at 400 ISO.

Windows95 compatibility seems to have done the trick.

I tried a fresh stack with the previous settings and it crashed numerous times. I finally switched to Win95 compatibility, 64mb of RAM and 1 core. All stacks were successful. Here's one of them. It's grainy because I wasn't paying attention and shot it at ISO 1600. http://memweb.newsguy.com/~cmorton...

I just tried it with the following settings and results: Win10 256mb reserved 4 cores quick align do stack It died on "interpolating output". I'm going to drop it back to 2 cores and see what happens. Crashed at the same point. Dropping back to one core. Crashed at the same point Increasing to 512mb...

Are you getting the error message "CombineZP MFC Application has stopped working"? Yes, that's the message. When running stably, I was using the default setting of 128 megabytes. [In boring detail, early on, I tried changing this to 8000, which produced a modal dialog box that said, "Warning: The a...

1. How much memory did you reserve?
   What if any compatibility mode did you use?

I tried a bunch of settings and it always crashes. I have 8gb of RAM. I had no other apps running.

That's excellent work. I'll give it a try.

Soldevilla, I am curious about your statement that Photoshop can't read Canon RAW. Photoshop ACR has always read Canon and Nikon RAW, as well as most other brands. Have you updated your software? It depends upon what version of Photoshop/Elements he's using. For years, I used Photoshop Elements 10 ...