Hi there,

I been trying to improve my skills in Macro Photography
and have always been a little frustrated at the limited depth of
field you can achieve when working with a macro lens at a
magnification ratio of 1 to 1 or higher.

I found a couple of programs that are designed to help you increase
the depth of field by combining multiple images, each of which are
focused on a different part of the subject, and then makes a single
image with an extended depth of field not possible with a single
shot.

I've uploaded some sample of images I created with these programs to
demonstrate what they can do.

http://freespace.virgin.net/george.g...ages/test.html

The programs are ;

Helicon Focus Pro. This is a commercial program and the trial only
works for 30 days if you don't buy a registration key. It can be
found at;

http://www.heliconfocus.com/pages/focus_overview.html

CombineZ. This is a freeware program. It can be found at;

http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder..../combinez5.htm

With care these programs seem to able to defy the laws of optics.
From my limited experience, Helicon does a better job, but I'm not
sure if the difference is worth the cost of the program.

I hope some of you might find them interesting.

Bye for now,

George Dingwall

Invergordon, Scotland

http://freespace.virgin.net/george.gdingwall/index.html