Tattoo machines

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000, focus stacked

The topic for this week is focus stacking. This is a handy digital post-production tool that allows you to create shots with a ton of depth of field even if your lens and lighting conditions made you shoot shallower when you were in the field.

Take a close look at the four photos below. The light in my friend Danny’s tattooing room generally isn’t the best for photography (though when he’s working he uses a better light). As you can see from the tech specs, I’m pushing my equipment nearly as far as I can. The shutter is at 1/40; any slower and I’ll start getting camera shake. The aperture is at 4.5, the wider end of the lens’s range. The ISO is at 1000; any higher, and the photos may start showing grain and inaccurate color.

But with these settings, I can’t keep the whole subject in focus. As you can see, each shot blurs at least part of the rack of Danny’s machines.

That’s where focus stacking comes in. Photoshop (and other software packages) will automatically combine several photos into a single image, using only the crisply in-focus parts of each shot. It also rotates and shifts photos automatically so they all line up. So all I have to do is make sure I shoot a series with enough partially-focused shots that Photoshop can then merge into a wholly focused image.

The outcome is the picture at the top of this post. The results aren’t always completely perfect. You can see some awkward blurring along the left edge, which I would have cropped out if I wasn’t using this as an example. But it’s way better than the unwelcome bokeh I was getting thanks to the limits I was working with.

Not that bokeh doesn’t have its place, even in this shoot.

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000

Nikon D7000, 35mm (35-80), 1/40, f/4.5, ISO 1000