2 hours ago, CCRphoto said:

Interesting! Have you found any software that is better than Helicon?

It's not so much the software, it's physics. By the time the part that is further away comes into focus, the closer part is badly out of focus and partly obstructing being able to see the further part. They provide two main stack methods (3 in total) One is better at avoiding the blurs of foreground objects the other better at avoiding haloes around the perimeter of the object. You can use one method to re-touch the stack made by the other method. But it has limitations and if subject parts are too far apart (in distance to the camera) it eventually becomes too hard to re-touch.

Then there's the garbage in garbage out problem, setting up the stack can be challenging and it's easy to mistake which object you want to place in focus for the starting point of the stack. and it can be hard to detect if you captured everything in fine focus just looking at the small screen, particularly if your vision in not 20/20.

2 hours ago, Chris Ross said:

It's not so much the software, it's physics. By the time the part that is further away comes into focus, the closer part is badly out of focus and partly obstructing being able to see the further part. They provide two main stack methods (3 in total) One is better at avoiding the blurs of foreground objects the other better at avoiding haloes around the perimeter of the object. You can use one method to re-touch the stack made by the other method. But it has limitations and if subject parts are too far apart (in distance to the camera) it eventually becomes too hard to re-touch.

Then there's the garbage in garbage out problem, setting up the stack can be challenging and it's easy to mistake which object you want to place in focus for the starting point of the stack. and it can be hard to detect if you captured everything in fine focus just looking at the small screen, particularly if your vision in not 20/20.

Cheers! Will be interesting to see how I go! Hopefully I don't get too many garbage in...

Interesting! Have you found any software that is better than Helicon?

There's also ZereneStacker. You'll still have to do touch up in places where it doesn't quite stack well. I've only used it on land with a tripod. Works well for flowers but parts of small animals sometimes look slightly misaligned.