Phaleonopsis Stack

I am experimenting with focus stacking to achieve the maximum depth of focus and sharpness to show off my orchids. This is a stack of 72 shots, merged by Helicon Focus. I am very well pleased with the result from a focus and sharpness point of view, but I worry that it is looking flat. What do you think?

Specific Feedback Requested

Do you think this looks flat?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: Yes
Nikon D800, 1/50th sec, f5.6, ISO400.
Nikkor 70-180mm at 140mm.
72 Shots controlled by Helicon Remote.

@dooswyn

This is a very nice use of stacking, and a lovely orchid. It is a bit low in contrast, which is much easier to correct than being too high. Stretching both ends of a curve or levels should do a nice correction, as your histogram is right in the middle of the range – or possibly just pulling up the middle of a Curves adjustment layer (or moving the center point of a Levels layer) to move the brightest areas up.

It feels a bit crowded on both sides, and a bit on the top. There is some sort of glitch on the left edge of the back petal that hangs down – an easy clone repair.

When I downloaded it to look at the histogram, my settings in PS warned me that the color space is ProPhoto RGB. You should convert to sRGB for web display, as many browsers will show incorrect color with other spaces.

Thank you! That is really useful feedback!

Good use of focus stacking. I’d guess you didn’t need 72 frames to cover the depth of this image, but maybe the Helicon Remote software generated that many? Oh well.

You asked if it looked flat. Yes, it does. The white point really needs to be pushed in via a levels adjustment (or curves). Here’s what is looks like with the white point moved to the point where the pixels end in the histogram for the image.

There is a dark band at the top of the frame that I did not try to correct. Not sure what that is.

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Thank you! That looks great! Yes, Helicon Remote made the decision bout the number of shots. The (relatively) open aperture and the slight telephoto would have contributed. But it still seems excessive. I think the dark band is caused by laziness and/or lack of attention to detail. My theory is that it is a shadow from the plantation shutters in my office.

Pieter, the stacking looks quite good. It’s a striking orchid. I do see some minor focus stack problems. The darkness below/beside the hanging down petal is one (although it looks like there may be an out of focus petal edge there). There are several what I call overlap problems showing where the buds overlap. These are unavoidable unless you can stop down enough to get both overlapped bits sharp in a single frame.

Thank you, useful feedback. This may be a good opportunity to start learning how to edit in Helicon Focus.

It’s a beautiful orchid well-shot - I’m just wondering if it would have been even more appealing with a contrasting colour for the background. A pale green or pink?

Yes! I was thinking along those same lines just this morning. We have a nice plumbago shrubbery with purple-blue flowers and dark green foilage. I could have that in the background, way out of focus. Gonna try that today, if the wind would stop howling.

Something like this?

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Yes, to my eye the contrasting BG helps the flowers stand out - I love this!

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