One More Day Lilly . . . Focus Stacked

[Chadeaux]

Playing with focus stacking this evening. Low light, so highlights weren't that good but here it is



Hope I can find another DSLR so I can start with better images as they'll yield better results (I hope).

 

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[WannaDig3687]

It almost looks 3D. Really cool what you are producing.

 

[Chadeaux]

Thanks. Total of 5 shots used, each focused on a different area of the day lillies. (actually shot 7 or 8 frames, used 5 best ones).

Mounted camera on tripod, then using manual focus (because that is all this old EOS will do anymore) did my best focusing on each bit I wanted to capture.

I've seen similar pics using as many as 40+ captures and they do look like you can reach out and pluck them off the screen.

 

[WannaDig3687]

You should be a teacher.

 

[Chadeaux]

Hmmm . . . do teach, but not photography.

It's a similar process to doing an HDR photo --- might be interesting to focus stack a group of HDR stacked images.

Something to toy with in a couple weeks when I have time to tinker again.

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Wonderful Photo!

 

[ronwoodcraft]

Looks Good!...Thinking about trying this....Do you mind sharing what f# you used?...Or does it matter?

 

[Chadeaux]

I use Affinity photo. It has all of the photo stacking, HDR, & RAW picture developing included. I would definitely rate it as comparable to photoshop, but without the monthly fee. The price is $49 and I think right now it's 20% off.

http://affinity.serif.com

 

[Chadeaux]

Looks Good!...Thinking about trying this....Do you mind sharing what f# you used?...Or does it matter?

Well, that's what happens when you try to read the forum on a small phone way after bed time . Sorry I misread your post.

I use the largest aperture on my camera (smallest number) --- I want the photo to have a very narrow focal range. You may wish to do differently,

Then I work from most distant to closest - others do the opposite.

 

[Chadeaux]

To show what can be done with Affinity Photo, here is another focus merge that I thought I would need to throw away because it was severely underexposed. The first photo shows how underexposed they all were (last frame of 7 used):



Affinity Photo has something called a "develop personna" which works much like ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). I've never used ACR or Lightroom, but did purchase Aftershot from Corel. It could never do this! Corrected the exposure, removed the noise, added a bit of "clarity" to achieve this:



That's part of the beauty of working with RAW files. You can bring out the data that a JPG or PNG could never save.

Oh, and the focus merge (actually called "focus stacking") will usually compensate for small moves that come from "bumping" your tripod. Notice that the two images appear to have been framed a bit differently, and yet the software did a good job of aligning the shots.

Lots of help and (I think) over 100 tutorials on using their photo editor. Lots of folks contribute LUTS (look up tables) as well as brushes and other items that can help with any projects you may want to embark on.

Drop by and see some of the stuff that's being done with this and other affinity apps --- https://forum.affinity.serif.com/

 

[Hawks88]

Nice photo. Thanks for sharing your technique.

 

[A2coins]

Dang thats a cool pic