Slow Life – Amazing Microphotography of Coral Reef made with 150000 shots

The Photographer, Daniel Stoupin took 150000 shots to make this little clip. Why so many?

Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures.

Do you have any gigapixel panoramas that you'd like to share? I work at a visualization lab with a 328 megapixel display. These images would be breathtaking on it.