Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda
Username  

  New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site
  New Feature: SMS Notification alert
  New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist
  

FM Forums | Photo Critique | Join Upload & Sell

  

Archive 2016 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)

  
 
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


I want to try focus stack for my landscapes. So last night I Googled this tutorial and was surprised that it's possible without special software.

http://petapixel.com/2014/09/07/tutorial-easily-focus-stack-using-photoshop-feature-probably-didnt-know/

The sample is just for test. I took 7 shots, one for each ornament with the focus on the near side of the ornement. I used a color balance target and shot using the normal overhead lights. I made a few adjustments in ACR then stacked them and used auto align followed by auto blend.

For a while I thought my computer was locked up. I have 16GB of ram and that may be marginal for 7 50MP images.

Anyway, this is my first attempt and am pleased with the results. I have Helicon Focus and was never impressed.

Landscapes are not as tidy as this and moving subject matter will be a real problem. If I ever get the weather I will try a landscape scene.






stacked and aligned images







Sample of a single image



Edited on Jan 22, 2016 at 03:32 PM · View previous versions



Jan 20, 2016 at 12:30 PM
WalterF
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


It is pretty fun to play with the focus stacking available in CC, look forward to seeing what you do with landscapes.

Walt



Jan 20, 2016 at 02:18 PM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


WalterF wrote:
It is pretty fun to play with the focus stacking available in CC, look forward to seeing what you do with landscapes.

Walt


Thanks Walt. My normal way to get deep DOF is to focus about midway into the scene on the left or right edge which compensates for field curvature and then stop down to f13. This has worked pretty good for single shots. If I want better, I will need to stack.

My images are usually pretty good from near to mid range and acceptable at infinity. Corners and edges still suffer a tad because most lenses fall off there, even the best. My first idea will be to shoot one near, one at an edge and one at infinity. If I stay at f13, the DOF ought to cover the rest. 3 shots will be easier to manage in post and also for subject motion.


My landscapes tend to be between 11 and 35mm

For what it's worth, these are manual focus using live view and my ability to manual focus is not very good. Probably none of these are in critical focus at the target. The stacking process and native DOF are covering it. The exercise does show the ability of the software to align and blend which was all I wanted to see.

I also suspect a purist might have taken more slices.




Jan 20, 2016 at 02:26 PM
beavens
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Ben I've seen a number of shots over in Landscape with just ridiculous focal depth using stacking and blending. It's probably not something suited to all types of landscapes, but it sure can be impressive when it's done properly!

Cheers,

Jeff



Jan 20, 2016 at 06:05 PM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


beavens wrote:
Ben I've seen a number of shots over in Landscape with just ridiculous focal depth using stacking and blending. It's probably not something suited to all types of landscapes, but it sure can be impressive when it's done properly!

Cheers,

Jeff


Fred Miranda did one with 32 slices. But he used an in camera App for his Sony and as I understand it, gets a single raw output. Anyway, that was my reason to try it.

I realized that if I do this for an UWA landscape, I am never going to be able to see the difference at web size. But I might at print size.




Jan 20, 2016 at 06:19 PM
Camperjim
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Ben, it is interesting that as much as I like your work, we always seem to be headed in the opposite direction. I have been thinking that it has been about 100 years since pictorialism was replaced by straight photography. The Ansel Adams, Group f/64, approach has dominated landscape photography. We have been looking for sharp focus, high contrast and color saturation in every part of our images, side to side, front to back. I am not looking to return to pictorialism, but the idea of sharp focus, high contrast and color saturation really does not make sense. Certainly for centuries landscape painters have been creating depth by showing gradations with backgrounds having softer focus, lower contrast, lower saturation.

Maybe this will not show well for a web image, but for my recent print of this image, the LaSalle mountains are decidedly soft and low contrast and the colors are soft and muted. To emphasize this effect, I plan on shooting more landscapes at wider apertures and focused on the foreground.







Jan 20, 2016 at 10:39 PM
Camperjim
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Now that I see the web version, the whole image is soft and needs some sharpening in the foreground. When I printed I bumped up the Qimage DFS sharpening a long way which helped the foreground focus.


Jan 20, 2016 at 10:44 PM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Hi Jim. I have been chasing technique since I started in 1980. I have never been even slightly interested in pictorialism. I gave up painting 50 some years ago because I could not get the realism I desired.

I do agree that if I have to have something soft, it needs to be the distance not the foreground. I want to see the veins in those blades of grass.

I have been getting this by over sharpening and adding contrast. I have backed off a lot lately. But I want to see if I can get back some of my infinity sharpness that I sacrificed.

Jim we have shot side by side, you know my style and I sort of know yours. Plenty of room for both.

It's just a pass time to me, and I choose different challenges.

Nice image, and there is no way to know how sharp it is on the web. Focus and presentation sharpness are two different things. I am not sharpening my images at all these days for web. If they are in focus, the zillion to one downsize to fit the postage stamp size we post here will make it appear sharp. In fact it will even hide out of focus. At least to my eyes.

By the way, the stuff I have been posting at 500PX (also shows on Facebook) are old images reprocessed my newer way. No HDR, little to no added saturation, no sharpening other than 15 or so during raw conversion.

They are not doing so hot at 500PX, my earlier style did better, but I need an outlet.






Jan 20, 2016 at 10:56 PM
Camperjim
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


ben egbert wrote:
.......

They are not doing so hot at 500PX, my earlier style did better, but I need an outlet.



Waiting to see what the 500px results will be sounds a lot like camera club competition. Since I agreed to give a lecture after I return from Hawaii, I stopped by my old camera club for competition night. It was horrible. A really bad judge who mumbled and gave out crazy scores. Whatever you do, do it for yourself.

I think looking at focus stacking sounds like fun and a valuable technique. It was just strange that I have been thinking about the opposite direction for the past couple of months.



Jan 21, 2016 at 01:07 AM
lighthound
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Nice exercise Ben. I have played around a little with focus stacking but primarily on close-up and macro type work. I did however use focus stacking on a long viewing platform/dock while I was up in NY last fall. I have yet to blend them together to see how well it worked.

For most of your style landscapes, I think you could open up to something like f/8 if you are going to focus stack 3 layers deep. Might be worth experimenting with a little if nothing else. Now if you have something super close like flowers 3 feet in front of you, then I would think you would want to slice that into 4 or more images.

I wish I had the time to experiment like you are planning on doing. This is something I want to get better at in the future. Looking forward to following along with you on this project.

I think any system out there is going to choke on (7) 50mg images. I know mine would have a serious melt down.


Jim - Nice image! I kinda like your current direction.
I have also been thinking about changing my direction very slightly when it comes to shadows and how much I should try to recover. It seems that the current trend is to maximize as much detail in the shadows as possible from every single image out there. However, I'm starting to say to hell with that. I think shadows are shadows and by keeping them more natural makes for a stronger image with more depth.


Dave



Jan 21, 2016 at 10:46 AM
Camperjim
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On
p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


lighthound wrote:
...
Jim -.....I have also been thinking about changing my direction very slightly when it comes to shadows and how much I should try to recover. It seems that the current trend is to maximize as much detail in the shadows as possible from every single image out there. However, I'm starting to say to hell with that. I think shadows are shadows and by keeping them more natural makes for a stronger image with more depth.

Dave


Dave, don't mean to hijack Ben's thread, but I have been looking more closely at compositions and techniques used in landscape painting. Claude Lorrain (1600's) was one of the early giants. It seems every landscape painter since then (Constable, Turner, Cole, Moran, etc, etc) has copied the same ideas. Many of these paintings have darkened considerably overtime but where probably quite dark to begin with. The dark areas help to draw the viewer into the scene. Landscape painters were not looking for details in the shadows, or universal focus, contrast, clarity and saturation. Maybe my processing needs to look more like this version.







Jan 21, 2016 at 11:45 AM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Camperjim wrote:
Waiting to see what the 500px results will be sounds a lot like camera club competition. Since I agreed to give a lecture after I return from Hawaii, I stopped by my old camera club for competition night. It was horrible. A really bad judge who mumbled and gave out crazy scores. Whatever you do, do it for yourself.

I think looking at focus stacking sounds like fun and a valuable technique. It was just strange that I have been thinking about the opposite direction for the past couple of months.



I agree on judges, most I have heard were pretty bad. They were usually specialists in architecture or portraits and had little use for landscapes. In fact most were urban only types. But a good landscape guy might be good for landscapes and a bit weak on the other styles.

What I always prefered was the membership vote, just like 500PX rather than judges. But for that to work, you need a very large audience. Clubs always tend to be dominated by specific styles. The one I was in in Spokane was birds and landscapes (at least for the members if not the judges),

Anyway, if you happen to see my latest Facebook work, click on the image and it should go to 500PX where you will see a larger image. Most of these will be my personal second rate images but processed as described. I should correct on thing, I still add sharpening to 5d3 and 1DS3 images, but not 5DS R

It is an exercise in PP nothing more.






Jan 21, 2016 at 11:46 AM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


lighthound wrote:
Nice exercise Ben. I have played around a little with focus stacking but primarily on close-up and macro type work. I did however use focus stacking on a long viewing platform/dock while I was up in NY last fall. I have yet to blend them together to see how well it worked.

For most of your style landscapes, I think you could open up to something like f/8 if you are going to focus stack 3 layers deep. Might be worth experimenting with a little if nothing else. Now if you have something super close like flowers 3 feet in
...Show more

Dave, yes focus stacking is more useful for macro and close ups. But it is never a problem if the sausage is too long, just cut it off.

I want my camera to capture the scene the way my eye does. Same ability to bring everything into focus, same ability to adjust brightness on the fly, and render the same colors. If I want to alter that reality, I can always do it in post, but I can't get back what is not in the raw.

I have hated the need to sharpen since my very first camera. Ansel Adams and the other old time masters had to invent USM, and the zone system and dodge and burn to overcome deficiencies in the film, cameras and lenses.

My camera has pretty much eliminated the need for USM. But the lenses still have shortcomings. Focus stacking can improve DOF, but it cannot fix the sharpness drop off from the center to the extremes in the lenses.








Jan 21, 2016 at 11:54 AM
ben egbert
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Focus stack (landscape added at end)


Here is a landscape 4 image focus stack using the auto align auto blend method. These are from my archive when I tried this using Helicon Focus. I abandoned the idea then, this new one is much better but does have a few oddities. It was too windy for this.

I am showing the focus stacked and two of the starting images, one near and one far focus. The other two of course were intermediate.







4 image focus stack







near focus







far focus




Jan 22, 2016 at 02:53 PM





FM Forums | Photo Critique | Join Upload & Sell

    
 

You are not logged in. Login or Register

Username       Or Reset password



This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.