04-11-2020, 06:07 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2020, 06:08 AM by toni-a.)
Tied focus stacking in EOS RP, although interesting I am still learning, how much focus increment ? how many shots ?
how to do it with any camera even if it doesn't have this function ?
any good online tutorial ?
Quick google search returned CombineZP and Picolay as two best free options. Never tried any, though. And Photoshop should be able to do it as well:
https://windowsreport.com/focus-stacking-software/
I use Affinity Photo to stack my macros. Earlier attempts with HeliconFocus and HeliconRemote were a bit quirky, so I hesitate to pay 200 $ for a lifetime license. I hear Zerene stacker is slow but rather good when it comes to fusing problems which usually come from shiny highlights. Sometimes these are rather annoying as they affect the contrast of some objects behind which I have a hard time to eliminate.
I agree with BC, the better way is changing the lens' focus and use either internal stacking routines, or HeliconRemote. But with manual focusing lenses the best way to go is using a macro rail - and a lot of good macro lenses are manual focusing. The difference between a Nikon Micro Nikkor 105 or 60/2.8 and a Laowa Apo 2:1 were massive enough to use the macro rail instead the in-camera routine which is so poorly implemented in every brand: No matter if Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus or Canon - at least for the standard macro lenses in their systems should be a LUT for each aperture which calculates the step size. And we also need an improvement of the handling. Starting- and endpoint are necessary to set up. And I think with focus-by-wire lenses this should not be impossible.
For the software no problem Canon DPP has native support for focus stacking, amid the quarantine affinity photo is offering three months free trial to everyone.
My question is in the field what should I do, how many shots, how much focus increment , EOS RP asks me such questions already, my first stack was a macro, it worked nicely however it took 40 shots at f5.6 , and the resulting DOF I got is better than with a single shot but not exactly what I wanted, will post photos once on my computer