This ladybug obligingly held still while I took a stack of focus bracketed images at, apparently, ƒ/3.2 and 1/100 sec according to the EXIF data. (Don’t look at me, I was in Fv mode.) This is hand held, and it’s always equal parts pleasing and mildly suspicious how well Helicon manages to line all the images up afterwards.
Bonus homework:
I forgot to mention, this was a stack of 50 exposures. I omitted a few of them from the final composite because nothing at all was in focus in them, as my R10 dutifully marches the focal plane all the way out into infinity.
I could have opened up the iris a bit more to get a faster shutter, but experience indicates that my 35mm macro prime is noticeably sharper at or below ƒ/2.8 despite theoretically being able to be wound up to 1.8. At wide open the depth of field at this distance is so shallow I require double the number of exposures as well, otherwise the gaps in between wind up being out of focus. 1/100 sec. is well within the shaky rule of thumb that the denominator of the exposure time ought to be equal to or greater than the focal length (again, 35mm in this case) and the optical image stabilization handles the rest. So far so good.
I see that Helicon still flubbed it slightly along the upper rear edges of the ladybug’s elytra if you look closely.