Did anybody tried properly the focus stacking/ shifting? I went through what I did and the results are terrible, maybe a couple of shots in focus and the rest totally out of focus. I'll have to do this on a more organized fashion to see where the problem might be.
This is definitely a bug in the firmware.
I was really keen on focus stacking (focus shift in Nikon-speak) - in fact, it was one of my reasons for getting the Z7. Unfortunately, focus stacking is an ergonomic disaster. It looks like someone at Nikon had read that there was something called focus stacking, and wanted to be able to put it on the feature checklist, but didn't actually know anything about it. Presumably there weren't any smart people available to implement it who knew how focus stacking works.
The most annoying thing about it is that the live view goes away while you're setting it up, and there's no way to actually aim the camera before starting the sequence. This makes handheld focus stacks almost impossible.
This could easily be mitigated in firmware, by assigning the “start” action to a function button.
There’s more. At the default settings, the Z7 will take 100 photos at it’s “middle” focus step. If the 24-70 S lens is focused about 1.5 metres away, the first three shots will be focused on something this side of infinity. The remaining 97 frames will be focused past infinity.
Even on the smallest focus step, only five of those shots will be this side of infinity. Although the documentation claims that the sequence will stop when focus reaches infinity, it does not.
The minimum focus step is much too small.
I can easily handhold well enough to do half a dozen shots at different focus distances, which is enough depth of field even for the very large canvas prints I make, if combined with stitching. I tried attaching this function to a control ... but I still get taken to the focus stack screen, and so I can't see what I'm trying to focus stack. Too bad - this would be such a simple firmware fix. More sensible control over the focus increments would be really handy too, and would also be easy to calculate in camera (if Nikon folks were interested, I'd be happy to help them out, as I have expertise in the area).