[JJ_SO]

I am, there is a gradual change of focus ..... indicating to me a decent amount of cropping to get the greater DOF of a smaller sensor at around F11-16.  At no point looking at the right leg from top to bottom, is the focus equal  ....... giving a look of a cropped M4/3rds ( I mean that in terms of the cropped size of the APSc sensor)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/

 This shot is a 15 image stack and all of the dragonfly is in focus !!

Yes, but your shot has no transition zone. You tried a composing with a blurred background to make the dragonfly look as if it's airborn, a fake "insect in flight" shot, so to say. In each focus stack there's a transition zone, depending on the used aperture.

But I think you're right. Several other shots also look as if they were done in one shot with a rather closed aperture and because the size of the pictures doesn't really get as big as possible, we can't see the diffraction related blurr.