photoartflightGladiolus Image Stack & Panorama @ f/4
Photographing in the garden again with a 300 mm f/4 Canon close focusing Lens @ f/4. At our condo our gardens are only 3 ft deep, so if I stop down for more depth of field, the background building or shrubs are distracting. A 150mm macro at f/ 2.8 is also too distracting for me. So the 300mm f/4 seems to work best for what I like. But a 300mm that close I have to combine image stacking for more depth of field for the areas I want sharper along with a series for a panorama to get the overall area I want to capture. If I back up I get more detail in the background, so I lose some of the softness in the background. Both series handheld and assembled in Photoshop. After you do a few it gets easier to get predictable results. At least most of the time! The featured image is a series of about 12 images. I also included a Balloon Flower & Hardy Lily while I was experimenting.
Another image stack and pano series after a rain – 300mm f/4 – 10 images
Another 10 image combo of image stacking and pano
Simple 8 Image Stack and pano – horizontal formats – Balloon Flower
Dappled light 8 Image Stack / pano – Hardy Lily
photoartflight 
Wow, what a good camera (and an experienced photographer) can do!
Thanks Eliza! It is fun to try different ways to get the images you are photographing. Plus the more you try different techniques, the better the chances are that it works out!