Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: epines on February 18, 2015, 05:14:44 pm
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I have a job coming up requiring sharpness throughout a few small and medium-sized objects. Even with tilt, I might not be able to achieve full sharpness without focus stacking, especially if limiting aperture to f/11 to avoid diffraction issues.
Would someone be willing to share their focus-stacking technique, or at least point me to a good online tutorial? Is it as simple as outputting the multiple shots and letting Helicon Focus combine them?
I'm shooting with a Hasselblad H3DII-39. I'm thinking I can either:
- Use it on the H body, with the 120mm lens, and shift the focus by hand or in small increments via Phocus
OR
- Put the back on my Alpa SWA with an HPF ring, and shift the focus by hand.
thanks
ethan
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I have a job coming up requiring sharpness throughout a few small and medium-sized objects. Even with tilt, I might not be able to achieve full sharpness without focus stacking, especially if limiting aperture to f/11 to avoid diffraction issues.
Would someone be willing to share their focus-stacking technique, or at least point me to a good online tutorial? Is it as simple as outputting the multiple shots and letting Helicon Focus combine them?
I'm shooting with a Hasselblad H3DII-39. I'm thinking I can either:
- Use it on the H body, with the 120mm lens, and shift the focus by hand or in small increments via Phocus
OR
- Put the back on my Alpa SWA with an HPF ring, and shift the focus by hand.
First choice: leave the front of the lens in one place, and move the back standard of the camera.
Second choice, and almost as good most of the time: focus the lens.
Last choice, except for really close: move the camera and lens.
I have a computer controlled rail and I hardly ever use it. For these images, I did fine by adjusting the focus with the ring on the lens:
(http://www.kasson.com/ll/f1.jpg)
(http://www.kasson.com/ll/f2.jpg)
Zerene/Helicon: that's a personal decision. They both can do a good job.
Jim
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Great -- thanks, Jim. Once you have the images, Zerene/Helicon does the rest?
If I end up using a tech camera, do you know what lens is recommended for macro / still life? Large image circle would be nice.
thanks
ethan
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I do this all the time. Key is to either Helicon or just do it in Photoshop using Edit/Auto Align Layers, then Edit/Auto Blend layers.
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Great -- thanks, Jim. Once you have the images, Zerene/Helicon does the rest?
Pretty much.
If I end up using a tech camera, do you know what lens is recommended for macro / still life? Large image circle would be nice.
Sorry, except for lenses that cover 4x5, I'm hopeless on tech cam lenses. The closer you focus, the bigger your image circle will be. I use a Nikon 120mm macro that won't cover 4x5 well at infinity, but has no problem up close.
Jim
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Hello,
This image was taken with a Mamiya 645 AFDII camera and Leaf Aptus 75 attached to a Horseman VCC adaptor fitted with a Rodenstock Apo Rodagon 120mm Macro lens.
It consists of about 12 images and was stacked using Helicon focus.
Cheers
Simon
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another setup sample....
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For low magnification images (less than 5X), I usually fix the lens in position, then move the camera. It's pretty easy to calculate the DOF for each frame based on magnification. If you use a 20% DOF overlap between frame, you won't have focus banding issues. Shoot at the sharpest aperture of the lens and if you want the background slightly sharper, then shoot the last frame with a smaller aperture. If you have ghosting around a foreground object, Zerene Stacker will allow you to retouch with individual frames and/or substacks.
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Great info. Thanks, everyone. Doing some testing this weekend.