Circle of Confusion

In photography, the circle of confusion is used to determine the depth of field, the part of an image that is acceptably sharp. It is controlled by the lens aperture diameter. The smaller the aperture, the wider the depth of field. Theoretically, the aperture diameter can be infinitely small. Unfortunately, at very small apertures diffraction and aberrations set in, defeating the purpose. Focus stacking overcomes these limitations by combining multiple images focused on different planes that are then reassembled in post production resulting in an image with a greater depth of field than any of the individual source images. Stripped of the visual cues of scale and distance a new reality emerges that can never be directly observed.