Setting up the shot
The bead is sitting on a random plastic picture holder thing but that was too light to hold it so I put a battery on it. The mirror in front of the owl reflects the strobe to light up its face; the mirror off to the side reflects whatever it can to get some fill light coming in from underneath; and the mirror behind the owl reflected mostly the small flash to get some color on the plumage. And all of that is sitting on another mirror. I’m not 100% happy with the illumination but that perfectionism is a rabbit hole in which you can spend an entire night. It’s a good idea to figure out some core areas that you for sure want highlighted and once they are go for it and stop tweaking.
Settings / black background
I also wanted each one to be as sharp as possible, so they are all focus-stacked using three separate captures: one focusing on the forehead, another between the talons, and a third on the teeth of the skull. So total it took 27 images to make the one above. Changing the flash color gels is pretty easy and once everything is set up the process goes quick. However it’s important not to rush it and check each shot due to the slight power fluctuation of the small flash. If you have to re-take one I’d recommend deleting the imperfect one right on the camera to keep it nice and tidy for later. I had the strobe at about 45% power, the little flash at 1/16-1/8 power depending on the color; the camera settings were 1/200 shutter (max sync speed), f/22, ISO100, custom white balance (always!!!), and the 2 second timer to prevent any shake/movement. Although there’s still some movement from just pressing the buttons so in general I’d recommend tethered shooting for this. The camera was a Canon 600D/t3i (2011), with the 50MM 1.8, on a 12MM extension tube. The lens was positioned about an inch farther than its closest focusing distance.
Focus stack / file handling
Then once everything is captured open each set of three in Photoshop, select File->Scripts->Load files into stack, and select the auto-align check box. After that each image will be its own layer in one file, and you’ll see extra white space around from the aligning. At this point go to Edit->Auto-Blend Layers and Photoshop will figure out the sharpest parts of each layer and use layer masks to combine them while hiding the less in-focus ones. Once it’s done doing that merge the three layers into one and crop + apply the minor edits. The processing can take a few seconds or more which makes for a perfect time to pray that the stack comes out nicely. Once it’s done make sure to zoom in and take a close look to make sure nothing is ripped or distorted. If it all looks good now you can crop and apply any edits.
When dragging the crop tool, in the top left corner of the selection box there is a size of the final crop in pixels. To keep everything spaced correct I just made sure that size was the same for each image. Then when aligning, depending on what version of PS you have, it will snap the owl to center naturally, so just make sure you have the same motion when moving the crop area and it will align them all the same way. Since we knew the pixel dimensions of each image create a new file that’s 3x that in each dimension and add the individual JPGs. Arrange as you see fit, make sure there aren’t any gaps, use guides to double check alignment, and ta-da.
