HOVER BOVVER....the perils of stacking

[sonyalpha]

I am still experimenting with early attempts at stacking:

I thought that I had it cracked until I noticed the right wing had twitched between frames:

A two frame stack....hand held:

sonyalpha

[rjlittlefield]

This situation calls for hand-stacking or lots of retouching. Sometimes even manual alignment is required, since having a large chunk of the frame move can mess up alignment for everything.

--Rik

[sonyalpha]

Thank You Rik

The though did occur to me......pre stack frame alignment.....how is it done please?

I use the free CZM stack software......I am aware that all the frames need to be the same size prior to stacking:

No matter how still and steady you might think you are whilst shooting................ hand held the shift can be considerable:

Is there a bit of this amazing software that I haven't discovered yet please?

Any advice you can offer will be very useful:

sonyalpha

[rjlittlefield]

The though did occur to me......pre stack frame alignment.....how is it done please?

In general, image alignment in all packages consists of scale, rotate, and shift (also called "translate"), as needed to make the images line up as well as possible.

The details are different in each package, and the details are different between different versions of CombineZ. If you are really using CombineZM, as opposed to CombineZP, then you are using something that is about 2 years behind the current version. I used to know what it did, but I have forgotten.

I suggest studying Brian Valentine's tutorial at http://www.wonderfulphotos.com/articles ... _stacking/

Is there a bit of this amazing software that I haven't discovered yet please?

Undoubtedly. There are many bits of CombineZ that I'm sure I haven't discovered either. A careful read through Alan Hadley's web site would probably be a good idea. You might also read through the archives at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/combinez/ to see what other questions have come up and been answered.

--Rik

[sonyalpha]

A very big thank you Rik,

for pointing me in the right direction............I have downloaded Combine ZP........what a difference?

Here is my first go with it:

A weevil of some kind sheltering from the cold wind on my Bay Tree:

Now I need to practice getting all the separate frames as similar as possible:

I do realise that tripods rails and other aids are used...........but I quite like the challenge and the the natural feel of the hand-held results:

sonyalpha