Landscape photography often demands extreme depth of field, where everything from the nearest flowers to the farthest mountains need to be in focus and as sharp as possible. Often, this exceeds the laws of physics for a single shot, meaning you will need to resort to blending multiple images, known as focus stacking. This excellent video tutorial discusses when you should use it and how to do it.
Coming to you from Landscape Photography iQ with Tom Mackie, this helpful video tutorial will show you when and how to use focus stacking for sharper images. The idea of focus stacking comes from the need for images that are sharp from front to back and the limitations of physics. Of course, to increase depth of field, you can simply close down the aperture, but at a certain point, you will start to run into issues with diffraction. And often, if you have a foreground element fairly close to the camera that you want to keep sharp along with everything to infinity, you will run into this issue. Focus stacking involves simply taking the same image at different focal points, then blending the different versions in post to ensure maximum sharpness across the entire frame. It is not a particularly difficult or time-intensive method. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Mackie.
