Focus AND Exposure Stacking

[CybrSlydr]

Hello folks!  I purchased a new-to-me used camera a few months back and decided to take it out today to practice some exposure stacking.  I like to do landscapes and such, so I figured this would be a great little test.

I was very pleased with the results I got from Affinity 2 using the HDR Merge function.  Here's one of my favorites from today:

Then I read about focus stacking - and for landscapes, this sounds like something I should really embrace!  Nice, blurry backgrounds can work, but some of these I want more in-focus than a large aperture can create.

Then I got thinking - what about combining focus stacking with exposure stacking?  This is certainly more complicated than just exposure stacking, but I think it could create some really great photos.

So my main question is - if I'm going to do this, which should I combine first and how might I go about doing this?  Should I merge the exposures first, then merge the focus, then merge the result of those two processes or something else?

Thanks for your help!

[John Rostron]

Hello @CybrSlydr, and welcome to the forums. Thinking about this from first principles I can think of no good reason to perform the two merges in a particular order. It will very much depend on how the exposure distribution relates to the focus distribution: are your more distant components more or less exposed than the nearer components?

This is a case of 'Try it and see' and, of course, report your findings back here.

John

[CybrSlydr]

Thanks John - I wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something in the process and degrading quality or destroying data doing it one way rather than another.

I'm thinking I just go with a standard +/- 2.0 Ev with 3 shots (Auto exposure bracket mode in my camera) and pick... 3 or 4 focus points.  Do the exposure bracket for each of the 3 or 4 focus points.  Then I HDR merge each set so I end up with the 3 or 4 HDR photos with each having a different focal point.  Then perform the focus stack merge and see what I get.

Need to get my sensor cleaned first though.  lol

[CybrSlydr]

Here's my first attempt at the focus and exposure bracket merge.

Took four sets of three +/- 2.0Ev bracketed photos on four different focus points on the pistol in RAW. I then merged the exposure stacks into four separate photos, exported those HDR images as TIFFs, and then focus merged those four photos into a single photo as a JPEG. I think it said this single JPEG is over 40MB before I cropped it to this size. Taken with my A7R IVa and Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 (photos taken at f/8) on a tripod.

Appears to be some artifacting/haloing on the rear-edges of the image such as the beaver tail and hammer/slide/rear sight. Otherwise, I'm pretty impressed with the quality.