The Colony Awakens

[AlanLichty]

Focus stacking is something I have done often through the years but never using the builtin feature on my camera. I decided to play around with it yesterday just to see how useful it might be. I thought it only worked if you had the outputs set for jpegs but it turns out it can do RAW. The camera seems to have some different ideas about where to stop the sequence and how wide the increments are for each step so I still have to spend more time getting this dialed in for what I want but I did manage to get a one part of a stack to work. I plucked a set of six shots that covered what I wanted in the image out of a sequence of 15 in this set.

This is part of our bed of Columbines that is now starting to get serious about giving us a colorful display of blooms. Showing the larger scene gives a good demonstration of how the Firecracker Columbines got their name.

C&C always welcome.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I like the range of colors from the blues and oranges of the columbines against the green foliage and brown tree trunks.

I have not tried the stacking on the R5.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the range of colors from the blues and oranges of the columbines against the green foliage and brown tree trunks.

I have not tried the stacking on the R5.

Thanks Jameel - there will be a lot more blooms in this mix in the coming weeks so the show is just getting started.

I am still trying to work out just how useful Canon's depth stacking (their term for this) feature is and how I can best use it. Photoshop didn't seem to be able to align the frames even with a short stack of them to work with which seems odd since I have used PS for this with hand focused focus stacks before.

 

[JimFox]

Hey, great job on the focus stacking. I haven't used it much, I can't recall the last time I tried, probably in a slot canyon somewhere. So I am not sure if Nikon has upped their game with the focus stacking as well.

I like seeing this bed of Columbines.

 

[AlanLichty]

Hey, great job on the focus stacking. I haven't used it much, I can't recall the last time I tried, probably in a slot canyon somewhere. So I am not sure if Nikon has upped their game with the focus stacking as well.

I like seeing this bed of Columbines.

Thanks Jim - I used it often in deep forest scenes with my old 5D Mark IV mostly selecting my focus point for each frame by hand on the touch screen which worked quite well. I haven't done that much yet with the newer R5 MkII but may revert back to that after my initial experience with an automated version. There is something to be said for "if it ain't broke why are you trying to fix it?"

 

[MonikaC]

Sounds much easier than using either Zerene Stacker or Helicon Focus (and you don't have to pay a subscription fee like the latter). At this scale, it looks like it does a good job.

 

[AlanLichty]

Sounds much easier than using either Zerene Stacker or Helicon Focus (and you don't have to pay a subscription fee like the latter). At this scale, it looks like it does a good job.

Thanks - I used to do a lot of focus stacks where I picked my focus points on the LCD screen and squeezed off each shot with my old DSLR. I am going to try out configuring a settings profile to match what I was doing with that camera and see how that works. All things considered that was actually less work than what I had to do for this shot. With the right f/stop I could get the same tight focus range as you see about with 3 or 4 shots. With the automated version from Canon you have to set it up for 10-20 shots with a wide open f/stop and toss everything but the first 4 or 5 shots since I can't really control where the sequence stops. Canon seems to feel that infinity is a worthy goal

 

[MonikaC]

Thanks - I used to do a lot of focus stacks where I picked my focus points on the LCD screen and squeezed off each shot with my old DSLR. I am going to try out configuring a settings profile to match what I was doing with that camera and see how that works. All things considered that was actually less work than what I had to do for this shot. With the right f/stop I could get the same tight focus range as you see about with 3 or 4 shots. With the automated version from Canon you have to set it up for 10-20 shots with a wide open f/stop and toss everything but the first 4 or 5 shots since I can't really control where the sequence stops. Canon seems to feel that infinity is a worthy goal

That does sound like a lot of extra work!