Focus stacking with different dof on final shot?

[Marsu42]

This is a long-standing idea of mine, but I never came around to do it (yet):

When doing a focus stack, it could be useful to do the last shot behind the object with a wider aperture resulting in more background blur. You can then combine the stacked object with the blurred background in post, potentially resulting in a nicer result and keeping the number of frames down because you can use f8-f13 on your macro lens which would result in a less pleasant background w/o this modification.

I think it's easily implemented, just add a menu option with the requested "final" aperture, then add this difference to the shutter on the final shot, done. What do you think, does it make sense?

[a1ex]

Sounds somewhat similar to DOF bracketing. I guess you will have to choose the background blur manually in post though, because afaik focus stacking software will weight the exposures according to local microcontrast.

[Marsu42]

because afaik focus stacking software will weight the exposures according to local microcontrast.

Helicon focus has three algorithms, and the best one often ends up with artifacts in the bokeh anyway so you have to clean it up with the built-in blending tool ... so replacing most of the background with the one from the last shot shouldn't be a big deal, the most important thing is that all stack shots are sized correctly to match each other and that's covered by hf (unlike blending in ps afterwards).