Combine ZM

Has anyone tried this free download for focus stacking? I want to try for macro subjects but one requirement for the program to work is to have a camera running CHDK. I do not know what this is and don't know if my D200 has this or not. Can anyone help me understand this ? Thanks, Ray Dove

Ray, I've used CombineZM for some time and I can tell you it does not require CHDK. All you do is feed CZM a tif and it's happy. BTW, CombineZM was replaced with CombineZP awhile back, so download CZP instead.
An aside - CHDK is a freeware utility that allows you to generate RAW images from cameras that don't normally support RAW. In my case, a Canon A620.

I have used CombineZM. As mentioned by Paul, it does not require CHDK or anything else. What you need is JPEG images. It is desirable to take pictures with tripod so that Combine ZM can align the pictures effectively.

Thanks for replies. Does it matter if images are jpeg, tif, or raw? Are the images taken with multiple exposure or does the program combine a series of normal exposure images taken at different focus points? Thanks in advance, Ray

CZP will take jpeg or tif as inputs, but not raw. To my knowledge it does not do exposure blending, only DOF blending. If you want a product that does both at the same time, you could try one of the pano programs. I know that PT Assembler (Tufuse) does, and I believe PTGui does.

CombineZ will accept PNGs, too (preferable to JPGs, I think). And it does do exposure blending; I'm not yet familiar with the interface of CZP, but the exposure-blending macro is somewhere on one of the toolbar drop-down menus in CZM, not the one with "DoStack."

Thanks for the info Rosmarie. I did some googling and found that Enfuse (also free) with do exposure and DOF blending too, so it looks like there are more options than I originally thought.