You've done pretty well for a first attempt.
#1 rule, if your subject has eyes, they need to be the focus point and must be sharp. You nailed that one.

The smaller the aperture you use, the greater depth of field you'll see in the final image. I know, you knew that already. To be able to use a smaller aperture and shorter exposure times theres's only really one thing you can do, add light. Flash, reflecter, whatever, it's the only way.

You need spend no money on focus stacking software, CombineZP is a good starting point whilst you develop your skills, and it's free.

Of course, you'll need umpteen images having the plane of focus at different points. To achieve that you'll need some kind of focussing rail to move the whole camera outfit (but not any lights) back and forth, or you can adjust focus but you risk moving the camera whilst doing so.

Mifsuds don't have any new Pentax gear on their web site but they have a used K10D and K20D, £149 & £199 respectively.

JudithAnn, if your address has a postcode, you can get deliveries.

If that were true how do you suppose companies like SRS MIcrosystems could ship their products abroad? Sounds daft to me.

I'm sure you will enjoy your trip, hope the weather is kind to you. all of those locations have some stunning photo opportunities.

The later Nikon DSLR's have a 'Focus Shifting' function to produce stacks of up to 300 images, The D850, Z7, and Z6 cameras have it that I know of. It should be so easy to implement in firmware I'm a bit disappointed that Pentax hasn't done it yet, given their range of excellent macro lenses. Search for 'focus stacking' on YouTube to see it in action.

That's probably how it's done in the P&S cameras that have the facility.

Focus stacking in-camera is something I mentioned on here in 2011 and it's still not available to us. Some point 'n shoot cameras have it, so why not Pentax ? ? ?

Affinity Photo does a better job IMHO. I have a stack of 22 images of a wasp nest and I've tried most of the available stacking software and almost all have some issues with it, Photoshop and CombineZP seem to leave OOF artifacts in various places. Picolay couldn't align all 22 images, but it might if I played longer with it. I got the best result from Affinity Photo but it did take an age to get the job done, Zerene Stacker is too expensive in my opinion and I can't remember how well (or badly) Helicon Focus performed, it was a while ago. On1 PhotoRAW has a stack limit of 11(maybe 14) frames but there is a workaround. Too fiddly for me.

For anybody interested in focus stacking macro images, I just came across this free software http://www.picolay.de/

It takes some time to produce the stacked image, especially if you need to auto-align your images. Combine-ZP is the only other free focus stacking software I've come across, there may be others.

Disclaimer: I have no connection to or financial interest in this software.

I've been a Lightroom user since it's first introduction and I'm confident in the use of the essential tools, and some of the obscure ones too. In recent years many other 'pretenders to the throne' have emerged and I've tried many of them. I'm referring to the paid options, not the freebies or bundled offerings like Gimp etc. I subscribe to Adobe's photographer package which includes Lightroom and Photoshop. I rarely use Photoshop.

Of the alternatives available I have used On1 PhotoRAW mostly, buying in to it's 2017, 2018, and 2019 versions. It promises to be a world class leader but it has it's issues on both Mac and Windows platforms with many users including myself reporting crashes, poor performance, colour rendition during export, and many more. On1's video demo's always appear flawless, but that's not us users experience.

I've had the Topaz suite for some years but have never used it much, until Topaz Studio was released. I like it, a lot. I'm still a novice user but getting to grips with masking and layering.

Then there is Afiinity Photo. I used Serif's software a very long time ago but got tired of their constant marketing phone calls and ditched them. Serif's photo editing suite, rebranded as Affinity Photo has really come of age and I'm warming to it, gradually.

Finally, for the simple reason that it was inexpensive, I bought Skylum's Luminar 3. Similar in operation to Affinity Photo but nowhere near as accomplished as the Serif offering.

However, none of these 'pretenders' includes a decent digital asset management (DAM) system that gets anywhere close to Lightroom's capabilities. I've looked at Photo Mechanic which appears to offer just about everything a DAM should have but the price is too high for me. Luminar doesn't even have keyword or search functions.

So, bottom line, I still use Lightroom to manage my photos and make the usual initial adjustments, cropping, colour balance etc. then use one or more of the other editors for finishing.

What software/hardware platform are you guys using to produce your images nowadays?