This article features a selection of handheld focus stacked HHFS frog images that were captured at the Royal Botanical Gardens using an M.Zuiko 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. As noted in a previous article, my E-M1X was set to 10 focus stacked frames with a focus differential of 4.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

Since captive frogs in public display cases tend to be fairly static, I decided to use my E-M1X’s in-camera focus stacking capability when capturing handheld macro images of these frogs. For the most part I tried to keep my ISO at base ISO-200.

I had inadvertently picked a local ‘PD’ day at the local school board for my visit, so the display area had a lot of traffic that included many small children. This resulted in the surface of the glass display cases becoming quite soiled from the inquisitive youngsters. Bringing my lens right up to the surface of the glass enabled me to shoot through the surface smudges and fingerprints.

Some of the display areas were quite crowded which made getting in tight difficult at times. I ended up doing a few circuits of the various displays and capturing whatever HHFS frog images I could based on the position of the subjects and the space available adjacent to the displays.

This had the unintended benefit of giving me a few different vantage points from which to capture my HHFS frog images of individual specimen.

One of the decided benefits of using my E-M1X (or similarly spec’d Olympus/OM System) camera for handheld macro photography is being able to leverage its outstanding IBIS performance in combination with in-camera focus stacking. Quite often this combination of capabilities allows me to use a wide open aperture like f/2.8 in conjunction with a slower shutter speed. Both of which help to enable the use of base ISO-200.

The crop factor is another important benefit of using a M4/3 format camera for handheld macro photography. Using a shorter focal length lens like the M.Zuiko 60 mm f/2.8 macro gives me an equivalent field-of-view as a 120 mm full frame macro lens. As we know… a shorter focal length will have more depth-of-field than will a longer focal length lens when shot at the same aperture, from the identical distance to subject.

Being able to confidently capture handheld images like the one above at f/2.8. 1/20 , ISO-200 by taking advantage of my E-M1X’s outstanding IBIS performance and in-camera focus stacking technology continues to amaze me.

Using the in-camera focus stacking function takes some experimentation and ongoing practice… especially if one’s intent is to use the out-of-camera jpeg output.

In many ways the technological capabilities of my E-M1X have  caused me to become quite spoiled. I find that I seldom capture ‘standard’ macro photographs any more. It is so much more challenging and enjoyable to use handheld in-camera focus stacking (HHFS) or handheld hi res (HHHR) for macro photography.

A standard macro image still has its uses of course. It’s like a bowl of vanilla ice cream. It can still be nourishing and enjoyable… but it is still just vanilla!

I suppose that’s one of the risks of computational photography technologies. These new capabilities significantly expand our image creating potential and raise our expectations accordingly. They can make the traditional approach to photography of ‘one frame for one photograph’ seem rather old, antiquated and ho-hum.  In some instances simply boring.

I loved capturing these HHFS frog images featured in this article, and leveraging the technology resident in my E-M1X. Creating a handheld macro HHFS frog image like the one above at f/2.8, 1/4, ISO-200 gives me a feeling of photographic adventure that I never felt with my full frame gear. Be forewarned that it can become addictive!

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from out-of-camera jpeg files using my standard approach in post. The in-camera focus stacking of my E-M1X was set to 10 frames with a focus differential of 4. This is the 1,248 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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