That should be fine.Originally Posted by Jon Ruyle
Breathing is when turning the focus ring causes the focal length of the lens to change. In this way, prime lenses (even macro) "zoom" as they focus. It's possible to create a lens that compensates for the focal length change so that changing focus does not change focal length, but this is not usually done except in expensive cinema lenses. As you can imagine, changing focal length slightly as you focus will cause a slight difference in magnification between layers in the stack. CombineZ can compensate for that without introducing artifacts as long as the changes are slight enough.
Apocryphal focus is a term that I learned from Joseph S. Wisniewski, a talented macrophotographer. He informed me that it causes exaggerated perspective (i.e. the same effect you would get from moving in closer and using a wider focal length) and that many find the resulting perspective to be unnatural. I don't know why using the focus ring causes it, except that perhaps it's the same thing as breathing. (Obviously, I'm not an expert in macro.)
If you use a bellows that can separate the movements between just the rear standard by itself (camera without lens) and everything (rear + front standard together), then it's possible to take layers that don't each have a different perspective.
The first possibility is by moving just the rear standard. The perspective will correspond to whatever the focal length of the lens is, but at least it wont change like it does when using the focus ring.
The second possibility is to move everything together (rear and front standard both). This results in "orthographic" perspective, which is as if the object were at infinity (i.e. flat or no perspective at all). Many macrophotographers desire orthographic perspective the most.
Hope that helps.
By the way, I can't stress enough how important it is to try a dedicated stacking program. Compared to shooting the layers in the first place, learning a new software program is a piece of cake.
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