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Archive 2013 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)
  
 
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Focus stacking is something I have wanted to experiment with for a very long time. Unfortunately until just recently I couldn't properly give this a try as my 10-22mm lens is broken and taped together over the manual focus ring. Making it only usable with AF. Yes, a REAL PITA but anyway. I now have a 17-55/2.8 lens that ISN'T broken (knock on wood) and allows me to give this technique a real go. I have been wanting to add this skill to my landscape work and can't wait to try this on some larger scenes. For now I chose a simple winter subject. Something I wanted to focus on more this winter are simple compositions. I think winter has so much to offer in the way of landscape scenes we often forget that going small can yield many photo opportunities as well! I am FAR from done with this subject. I don't feel I'm anywhere close to "that image" with these photos but wanted to share them anyway. I am hoping to shoot these "snow dunes" with a colourful sunset over head. Hopefully tomorrow.

These are all manually blended in CS5. CS5's auto-blending is absolute crap IMHO. I tried a demo of Helios and wasn't impressed either. Plus, manually blending gives me total control.

Hope you like.






















Dec 15, 2013 at 10:09 PM
roguecoolman
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Scott,

Hey you took out the 7D . I like the first photo, the way the repeating snow humps and the portrait orientation is very pleasing. I haven't done any focus stacking at all but these look great. I think once you get some sweet sunset colors, these are really going to sing.

Have you thought about BW?

Jason
Dec 15, 2013 at 10:45 PM
JimFox
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Hey Scott,

Man... Focus stacking.... that's going to be a good way to lose your last remaining bits of sanity...

#1 and 4 are my favorites from these. But all look nice, just those 2 really stand out.

On a composition where you don't have to exposure blend perhaps focus stacking might not be that bad, but I would dread the thought of having to exposure blend and focus blend.... yikes!!! For me, I am just going to stick to using the old Hyperfocal distance...

Jim
Dec 16, 2013 at 01:00 AM
killersnowman
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Great results scott!
How was the process? Was it pretty straight forward? Care to share how tge sausage was made?


Dec 16, 2013 at 04:38 AM
lookoutscout
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Scott, I have not tried this myself. How many images did you shoot, stack and process? I watched a person shoot 40 the other day of small ice crystals on a lake. She was using the Cam Ranger software and controlling the entire process from her IPad remotely. But, 40 images--I asked her if that was necessary to get the desired result and she said it was to have the entire ice crystal in focus from top to bottom. It felt a bit like she was shooting an MRI. Anyway, I think I need a bigger computer for this.
Dave
Dec 16, 2013 at 07:45 AM
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


lookoutscout wrote:
Scott, I have not tried this myself. How many images did you shoot, stack and process? I watched a person shoot 40 the other day of small ice crystals on a lake. She was using the Cam Ranger software and controlling the entire process from her IPad remotely. But, 40 images--I asked her if that was necessary to get the desired result and she said it was to have the entire ice crystal in focus from top to bottom. It felt a bit like she was shooting an MRI. Anyway, I think I need a bigger computer for this.
Dave

i would of suggested that she move herself squarer on to her subject if her plane of focus was thar adrift
Dec 16, 2013 at 08:05 AM
Justin Grimm
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Great shots Scott. I really like the tones and super high crunchiness of the snow. These would make some really nice big prints. You should try Helicon Focus sometime. I doubt you would even need to fix anything with scenes this simple in Helicon. When you stack more complex shots, trying to do everything manually like you did here just wont be feasible if you have a day job


Dec 16, 2013 at 08:56 AM
AMaji
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Lovely elegant images. you did a great job blending/stacking, and the compositions are superb.
Dec 16, 2013 at 09:58 AM
rpope
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


These came out great. I love the curves, texture and light. Great work!!

Rich
Dec 16, 2013 at 02:24 PM
Mark Metternich
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Looks great!!!

CS6 and PS CC has worked great for me. One of the main things is shooting a little extra area, as well as getting a lot of shots. Over time I began to do more increments and this has helped the software to do a much better job. Also, TURN CAPTURE SHARPENING OFF!!!! Not doing so will fool the algorithm into thinking stuff that is not sharp, is sharp. I should have a full blown video tutorial on this (with in the feild and behind the computer footage) in the coming month. Lastly, for those just doing web images or small prints. Not worth it IMO. Just make sure you master your sharpening...
Dec 16, 2013 at 02:47 PM
harshaj1
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


These look great with everything in focus. I have been using PS 6 and now CC. The auto blending work great most of the time.
Harsha
Dec 16, 2013 at 06:45 PM
Charlie Shugart
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Good images, Scott.
And the composition of the last shot really pleases me.
IMO with all of these the snow looks oversharpened (or too "grainy?") to be natural.
When nature looks unnatural, I always wonder about the benefits of high tech.
But then- I'm not a techie .
Charlie
Dec 16, 2013 at 07:16 PM
Tim Knutson
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Very nice.
Dec 16, 2013 at 07:34 PM
onegreatcity
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


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


Dec 16, 2013 at 07:54 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Thank you all very much!!!



roguecoolman wrote:
Scott,

Hey you took out the 7D . I like the first photo, the way the repeating snow humps and the portrait orientation is very pleasing. I haven't done any focus stacking at all but these look great. I think once you get some sweet sunset colors, these are really going to sing.

Have you thought about BW?

Jason

Thank you Jason!

I have thought about BW just havent had the time to experiment. I am still capturing more scenes like this and once I have a decent collection I want to try some BW conversions. I am think high contrast.


Dec 17, 2013 at 02:07 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


JimFox wrote:
Hey Scott,

Man... Focus stacking.... that's going to be a good way to lose your last remaining bits of sanity...

#1 and 4 are my favorites from these. But all look nice, just those 2 really stand out.

On a composition where you don't have to exposure blend perhaps focus stacking might not be that bad, but I would dread the thought of having to exposure blend and focus blend.... yikes!!! For me, I am just going to stick to using the old Hyperfocal distance...

Jim

Thanks Jim. I too am an avid hyperfocal user but these scenes, for me anyway, really came out well with all the snow in sharp focus. I really like this effect here.


Dec 17, 2013 at 02:11 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


killersnowman wrote:
Great results scott!
How was the process? Was it pretty straight forward? Care to share how tge sausage was made?

I the the process for these images was pretty easy. The first is made from 4 images (all I took for that one) but the rest I had capture around 10 images but didn't use all of them when blending. Just what I needed to have the whole scene in focus. You can say I took extra to make sure. Still learning this method.

For shooting I used live view at 10x zoom. Focusing on the closest edge and working my way through the scene adjust focus along the way.

I opened all images as a stack using CS5 script under the file menu.

Once all images were loaded in CS5 I selected all layers and applied auto-align. When changing focus it will cause things to shift in relation to different focal length.

Then I just masked off all the layers and "painted" in the sharp areas of each image.


Dec 17, 2013 at 02:12 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


lookoutscout wrote:
Scott, I have not tried this myself. How many images did you shoot, stack and process? I watched a person shoot 40 the other day of small ice crystals on a lake. She was using the Cam Ranger software and controlling the entire process from her IPad remotely. But, 40 images--I asked her if that was necessary to get the desired result and she said it was to have the entire ice crystal in focus from top to bottom. It felt a bit like she was shooting an MRI. Anyway, I think I need a bigger computer for this.
Dave

Thanks Dave. See my previous post.

WAY back in the day before I got serious about photography I tried some macro focus stacking with my 5MP P&S. I have to take something like 20+ image to capture a small pebble completely in focus. When macro shooting your DOF is very shallow and more so if you use a wider aperture. Even at f16-22 in macro will have a very shallow DOF. So if she was shooting something small up close 40 images sounds about right especially if the whole scene is being capture in focus. Most of the images in focus stack are for the closer objects. As you get to further away objects the bigger the increments can be when changing focus.


Dec 17, 2013 at 02:34 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Mark Metternich wrote:
Looks great!!!

CS6 and PS CC has worked great for me. One of the main things is shooting a little extra area, as well as getting a lot of shots. Over time I began to do more increments and this has helped the software to do a much better job. Also, TURN CAPTURE SHARPENING OFF!!!! Not doing so will fool the algorithm into thinking stuff that is not sharp, is sharp. I should have a full blown video tutorial on this (with in the feild and behind the computer footage) in the coming month. Lastly, for those just doing...Show more →

Thanks Mark. What is PS CC?
Dec 17, 2013 at 02:39 PM
Scott Kroeker
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Snow Dunes (focus stacking experiment)


Charlie Shugart wrote:
Good images, Scott.
And the composition of the last shot really pleases me.
IMO with all of these the snow looks oversharpened (or too "grainy?") to be natural.
When nature looks unnatural, I always wonder about the benefits of high tech.
But then- I'm not a techie .
Charlie

Thanks Charlie! Nope, cant do this technique with film :P....for this subject though I am very much liking the results!



Dec 17, 2013 at 02:40 PM
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