Piece o’ cake

Focus stacking

When shooting up close you will only get a small segment of the dish in focus, which often works well, but for long, thin items, like our stollen, it’s usually better to have the whole thing in focus. This is impossible in a single shot, so the solution is take several shots, each focusing on a different sliver of the subject – some Nikons have an automated ‘Focus Shift Shooting’ mode that will do this for you – then merge them in post. We dressed the scene with a scattering of fruits and nuts. Our stollen was quite bland and beige-looking on its own, so a row of berries atop not only brightens things up, but gives you a point to focus on for each stack segment.