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Archive 2013 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)

  
 
Scott Kroeker
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


onegreatcity wrote:
These look great Scott! Why in heck didn't my images turn out this well with this gear?


Thanks Cam. Maybe because it collected too much dust on your desk?

I am still learning new features of this camera. The other day I found out, by use, that the focus points can be separately configured depending on which way rotate the camera. A neat feature but not sure something I need .



Dec 17, 2013 at 02:45 PM
Matt Tilghman
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Absolutely LOVE #1!


Dec 18, 2013 at 12:32 PM
DonH
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


These look very nice, Scott. You might take a look at Zerene Stacker.


Dec 18, 2013 at 04:24 PM
kururu
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


love the last one, beautiful


Dec 18, 2013 at 10:20 PM
aFeinberg
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Light is freakin rad here. The first looks sick cropped above the grass. Just leave it as abstract. Nice work sir.

aF



Dec 19, 2013 at 05:38 AM
jbouchard
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Great shots Scott, nice compositions all of them.

I don't mean to steal the thread but there seems to be some interest, so I'd like to throw in a little about how I do focus stacking... the lazy man's way. I'm a professional geek so the computer part of this is easy for me, it's the artsy part that I struggle with. I like this lazy man's approach because the effort to post process it is almost nil, which encourages me to shoot a bunch of shots, run them through the process and see what I get. If I don't like what I get, I can go back and try again. The shorter that feedback loop, the faster I learn.

I'm using free software called "hugin" and "enfuse". Hugin handles alignment of the images, and enfuse handles the merging. I happen to be using it on my Linux laptop, but I'm pretty sure it's available for Windows and Mac. I happen to be using funky commands at the command line, but I'm pretty sure there are GUI-clicky apps which use hugin and enfuse in the background.

My lazy man's approach....
- ideally set camera to everything manual including turning off auto-iso and auto white balance. This keeps it consistent shot to shot. I seldom remember.
- set up on a tripod as appropriate to the scene. In the example below I'm using a plain old 50/1.4 manual focus lens at f/5.6 to optimize sharpness while putting my background a bit out of focus.
- I shoot a handful of shots, like 5-10 depending on the depth. Just think of it this way... to generate a crisp image in total, we need every piece of the puzzle sharp in at least one shot. Landscapes typically need fewer while macros more.
- the way I adjust focus is by simply rotating the focus ring between shots. You will get some focus breathing, but the software can deal with that. Don't frame too closely, leave a little extra around the sides, because the align and merge has a cropping effect. Some people use complex setups like rack and pinion slides, I don't.
- I take JPGs straight from the camera, because I'm lazy and because it runs much faster on my computer. Convert RAW if you must, but make sure to do the same conversion for each shot.
- With Hugin there is a program called "allign_image_stack". I just run the command "align_image_stack -v -m -a OUT *.JPG" It generates a set of aligned TIF files called OUT0001.TIF, etc.
- Enfuse handles the merging. I run "enfuse -v --exposure-weight=0 --saturation-weight=0 --contrast-weight=1 --hard-mask --contrast-edge-scale=0.5 --output=output.tif OUT*.tif" It generates one file called "output.tif".
- On my 4 year old laptop each of those steps takes a couple of minutes. I'm using 12mp normal JPG images from my D700, with half a dozen shots. If you have 36mp images x 40 shots it will probably churn all day.

Below is a shot from 7 images run the the above process, and no post processing beyond that point. I'd take this result and apply a bit more color saturation etc, I just haven't gotten there yet. There is a bit of "halo"in places, particularly on that one leaf at 10 o'clock. I'm trying to figure out how to minimize that, but haven't figured that out yet.







Edited on Dec 20, 2013 at 06:59 AM · View previous versions



Dec 19, 2013 at 07:50 PM
Sneakyracer
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Good job, looks great!

Also of note, some lenses suffer from focus breathing so as you change focus the angle of view changes, so not all are suitable for focus staking, specially in more extreme cases.



Dec 19, 2013 at 08:13 PM
Garrick L
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Very cool shots Scott!


Dec 19, 2013 at 10:33 PM
helenica
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


These a wonderful shots Scott! I just love the detail in the snow!


Dec 20, 2013 at 04:04 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Thank you very much for the comments/feedback/suggestions!


Dec 21, 2013 at 01:30 AM
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