Stacking technique

[Olympusman]

I have mentioned I have a pond dip rich in Amoena proteus. The trick is to find one out in the open without any sediment on them. They are also relatively thick under high magnification. They do not slither -- they walk on their pseudopodia so they are raised from the surface of the slide. The only solution is to do a focus stack, but since the pseudopods move rapidly as does the particles circulating in the protist, it had been dificult to get a good series of images for stacking.
Then it occurred to me that if I use the sequential drive mode on my DSLR, I could shoot the sreries of stack images quite rapidly. I set the camera up in sequential drive mode and using fine focus, find where the top sharp focus point is on the organism. I use a USB wired remote as a shutter release. I hold the down the shutter button on the release and rack the focus using the fine focus knob on the scope through the thickness of the organism. I can then do the stack in Combine ZP.
Here is a shot of a Naupilus stacked from 18 images.


If you have observed Naupilus and copepods, they skitter about and then stop for a few seconds. This is long enough to shoot a stack series.