Focus Stacking Using Video

摘要

Focus stacking is an amazing tool for achieving greater depth of field. I remember clearly the day of revelation, years ago, when Carel Sartory and Spike Walker introduced me to the merit of a new software that had become available, Helicon Focus. Up to that point I had taken multiple images, adjusting the fine focus between each one, and chose one as my base image. Next I would identify the areas that were soft and out of focus so that I could find another image where these were sharp. Carefully these sharp areas were cloned on to the base image. The head of the phantom midge larva, illustrated here (Figure 1) as an example of the technique, was my first attempt at this. Made in 2003 it was a live specimen taken with a 3 megapixel Sony compact camera on a student microscope using bright field. It is worth showing as, far from perfect, it demonstrates how the technique of increasing depth of field has come in 15 years.