Focus Stacked Butterfly

I have no idea what this butterfly is except to say that it is most certainly not native to these parts. It is in fact a specimen which I picked up years ago at an antiques fair. My reason for blipping this to day is simply to show you what can be done by focus stacking.
Normally when working close up one is confronted by the problem of a lack of sufficient depth of field. Here I have deliberately shot the photo with one wing tip close to the camera and the other one as far away as possible. This gives the maximum spread possible and by shooting at f5.6 I should not have anything like enough dof to cover the entire insect. I shot three frames. The first one was focused on the near wing tip. the second one on the head and the third one on the furthest wing tip. If you look at my blipfolio you will see the middle exposure where neither wing tip is in focus. This would normally be considered an impossible shot. Even if I were to stop right down to f22 I still would almost certainly not have enough dof to cover a subject like this.
Enter focus stacking. Using a very simple and free piece of software named CombineZM I have been able to stack the three frames together and allow the software to combine them into one frame with the maximum depth of field.
You will notice also the pin through the thorax in the blipfolio shot. This I have had to clone out after the combining process. The creature is so fragile that I don't think I could pull this pin out without the whole thing crumbling to bits.
I upload this just to give you an idea of what can be done. You might be tempted to have a go at it yourself some day.