I’m looking to upgrade from my Nikon D7100, and am looking really hard at full-frame mirrorless. Since I end up blending a lot for depth-of-field, focus bracketing seems like a great feature to have. For those of you with cameras that will bracket focus, how do you like it? Am I correct that the Nikon Z6 has this, but the Sony A7iii doesn’t??
John. I can’t seem to find the right place on the Sony website right now, but they treat their camera operating systems like tablet computers and they have after market apps for them. I think I remember focus stacking being one that’s available for my A6500, so it may well be available for the A7iii. The apps are free or cheap (around $5-$10). If you check an A7iii forum, I’m sure they can tell you.
1 Like
FYI they removed apps from the A7iii series, you can still get them for the A7ii series, but I wouldn’t count on the apps being around forever. Not sure why they did this…
I use focus bracketing on my X-T3 all the time and love it. I could live without the feature, but it sure is nice to have. Sometimes I will just leave it on and even when I think I have enough depth of field, the camera takes extra shots and later I realize I did need them.
1 Like
Thanks for that update, David. Hopefully, they’re just putting the functionality in the camera with firmware updates, but it does seem strange.
1 Like
Thanks Dennis and David! I really appreciate the feedback. I’m glad to hear you use yours a lot David; I suspect I would do the same if it was an option.
I also have used focus bracketing with my X-T3 and generally like the results… I will either use Helicon Focus or PS for the end result. I’ve had instances, however, where I didn’t think the camera continued out far enough. Would you mind letting me know how you set the # of frames, and steps? I use 0 for interval and it looks like the last settings were 15 for frames and 4 for steps.
Thanks
I will say it depends on what you are photographing and it does take some experimentation to figure out what works for your subject. For macro and small scenes smaller steps and more frames will be necessary. For landscape I think I found a good setting to be steps of 10 and number of frames as 20-30, but if it reaches infinity before taking all those frames it will stop. I usually find it takes 2-10, but I set it higher for those times where it needs more to reach infinity.
Thanks… it looks like it is time for me to do some more test images. I think I was being too conservative. I’ve been shooting with Fuji cameras and lenses since 2015. I really enjoyed your review of the X-T3. It brought up several things I need to investigate further. I have enjoyed the pre-shot feature for wildlife photography, it has allowed me to capture some moments I would have missed.