Using Helicon, you can work with DNG files. I also go through this workflow in the feature video. Last year, I wrote a detailed article about how to use Helicon Focus to stack complex woodland scenes. It is where tools like Helicon Focus still provide superior results to what Photoshop offers. The only thing you have to do is put everything together. You can now capture a sequence of focus-shifted images very quickly by combining automatic focus bracketing and high ISOs. I show more examples, including a night image taken at ISO 6,400, in the feature video. And since Adobe introduced their new AI denoise feature, we finally have a tool to clean up an image without introducing unwanted artifacts. Thankfully, AI allows us to overcome the technical limitations of our photography equipment. Even with the Canon EOS R5, I seldom went beyond ISO 800. In the past, I always shied away from it. But it also leads to more photos taken for focus stacking, which negates the effect. Opening up the aperture is a solution to get shorter shutter speeds. If you do focus stacking, you'll want all images in the sequence captured within that period or close to it. Think of how long you'd usually expose a single photo to avoid movement in leaves and branches showing up. Especially in the forest, this is a challenge when there is wind. Lightroom AI Noise ReductionĮven the automatic bracketing of modern cameras can become slow when shooting around sunrise or sunset. If you don't know which aperture will give you the best results, capture two or three sequences with different settings and select the best one at home. You'll still retain superior detail compared to an aperture of f/16 or f/22. While diffraction will already start to become noticeable, it is a compromise you will sometimes have to make, even with focus stacking. If you want fewer photos in a sequence because of moving elements, use a slightly smaller aperture of f/11 or f/13 combined with an increased ISO. Having elements only inches from your camera or shooting with a longer lens will increase the number of images. Since the R5 considers the current aperture when adjusting focus, the number of images will usually range between three and six with the most narrow setting when shooting at f/9.5 with a wide lens. Setting a wider increment might result in fewer photos and a quicker bracketing sequence, but blending the image will become more challenging. ![]() I have set up the R5 to use the most narrow focus increment during bracketing. But tests and extensive pixel peeping showed that in the majority of cases, the difference in quality between 12- and 14-bit is negligible. At first, I was hesitant to use it, because it uses an electronic shutter resulting in 12-bit raw files versus the 14-bit raw files you get in the other shutter release modes. It has quickly become one of my favorite features of the Canon EOS R5. The in-the-field process got much simpler as camera manufacturers began introducing automatic focus bracketing. Placing the focus points too far apart could also still happen. This approach is good enough for the web, but the results often lack detail in large-format prints.Įven when touch screens later allowed for faster focusing and hence faster capturing of a stacking sequence, it often still took too long to capture all the photos. ![]() So often, the only way to get a photo after all was to stop down the lens and increase the ISO. Stacking them involved a lot of retouching. Moving elements were a big problem because of the time required to manually shift the focus between individual exposures. In the beginning, though, it was difficult for some scenes. Usually, I try to shoot at f/9.5 for the best compromise between overall sharpness and depth of field.īecause fiddling around with the hyperfocal distance was slowing me down too much while still just giving me "acceptable" sharpness, I already made focus stacking a routine more than 10 years ago when I got my first full-frame camera, the Canon 5D Mark II. I was never satisfied with the results obtained by stopping down the lens. Focus stacking has always been my choice for landscape and architecture photos requiring a large depth of field.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |