[scottburgess]

Hi,

 

I'm considering investing in a StackShot macro rail system to work with my 1x-5x Macro Zoom.  Both Helicon Focus and Zerene Stacker say they provide support for running the StackShot rail control hardware.  There seem to be some reasons to consider either one.  For example, Helicon Focus indicates they have RAW support and a 3D model constructor; Zerene Stacker appears to have more software control over the final image, and possibly better retouching.  Helicon is less expensive, but Zerene may be able to produce better images.

 

Testing them to compare is not as easy as it appears: the hardware StackShot control for each is embedded into the Pro versions, but not the free versions.  The hardware integration would be an important criterion for me.

 

Does anyone have experience with one or both of these?  How do you like working with them?  What comparisons can you make concerning the quality of images produced and how efficiently one can produce them?

 

Thanks in advance for your observations.

 

 

[JJ_SO]

I used Helicon for several shots. Some things are - or better said, became great (in the beginning it was pretty buggy) after a while. I also use CamRanger's stack shooting capabilities, but then I need Helicon again to render the stack.


Sometimes Helicon has trouble with less contrasty regions - forget about doing low keys, highlights (when there's no texture in, like metallic surfaces) also cause problems.


The 3D thing I tried once. It was, at best, a good laugh. If there are holes, cavities or irregular surfaces in a weird angle on your subject, it will fail.


RAW - after a while I came to the conclusion, it's just blowing up disk-space, jpg is enough if you take care with lighting.


It's very interesting to use apertures like f/4 or f/5.6 which are normally useless in Macro regions. But here they give you outstanding sharpness and a clear cut between subject, back- and foreground - this can, as always, be exaggerated.


I'd appreciate, if Helicon Remote would not always make so much useless shutter action, but maybe I'de need to change the settings and switch off LiveView during stack shooting.


The manual isn't that great, some parameters are difficult to understand and it's not always clear what happens. As a Mac user, I think, the last update was in June 2012 - it's not been perfected... Windows users get more often updates.


It's based on a laptop - I'd prefer to go light out in the field., So CamRanger with an iPad/iPod is for me the better way to go. What's also nice, Helicon focus has panorama capabilities.