Methods for organizing shooting in the field for post production

Discussions
1

I tend to use exposure bracketing and or focus staking for most of my landscape photography. I often shoot panoramas that include both bracketing , multiple frames , Focus stacking and several takes of the same composition . I simply photograph my hand in front of the lens to signify the conclusion of a sequence. However I find in post it’s often confusing to select the best combination of files especially when I’ve done multiple takes. Does anyone have an alternate method that you’d like to recommend?

2

I haven’t tried it, because I don’t usually get that complicated, but a small whiteboard that you can write codes on and photograph might work. I think I’ve seem some that were 5x7 or thereabouts.

3

Ya I might have to resort to such a thing. I’m just trying to keep the amount to carry down.

4

I share your frustration. I haven’t used your hand method for separation. On my camera if you press the Menu button during a photo bracket it will terminate the sequence and produce a black image. This black file separates adjoining image sequences. Why terminate a sequence? Because it’s shooting beyond the range of the sharpness of the furthest object. But sometimes your subject includes both near and far. What I do is import the files into Lightroom and group each stack in the catalog. That way all the files in a stack will appear as one image. Prior to that I used file timestamps to determine where things start and end but that method sucks. I still put all my conglomerate files into its own folder. No matter how you do it it’s a time-consuming overhead.

5

thanks for the input

6

This may sound a little crazy, but if you have a smart phone, you could keep an audio log of your shots.

When you get your images imported into your computer you can use the time stamps of the images and the audio.
-P

7

And if you use Lightroom, in the Library module, go to Photo - Stacking - Auto stack by capture time - it will group all your photos in a bracketing session together. You can select how much time you want to use as a guide, typically I do 3 or 4 seconds and my brackets end up together with just one representing all of them. You right mouse click to un stack the group. Make sense??

8

thanks. I use Bridge and ACR, Bridge does the same thing.

9

Thanks, I’ll try the audio stamp.

10

I sometimes struggle with this as well and unfortunately, I don’t have any clever solutions for you. For panoramas I use the “place your hand in front of the camera and take a picture” trick and for everything else I just use the files time stamp and exposure data to group my image sets.

11

Thanks, that’s basically what I do. I made up some cards I’m going to try photographing i.e. pano start pano end, focus blend start and end also Bracket start and end.

12

I use a photo finger count to show the beginning and end of each sequence. Simple, requires no extra gear and works (provided I remember to do it!). I’ll do a quick voice capture on my phone if I think I need to explain something to my future self, who will have forgotten.

13

thanks Mark it’s the “provided I remember part that gets me”.

14

I just use one finger for start and two for end. Once I import into LR, I use a color code (purple as it’s a blend of primaries) to remind myself over time that these “funky frames” are part of a bracket, focus stack, or pano. It’s usually clear from exposure or composition what I intended. Kristen’s stacking by time would further organize that for clarity as well.

ML

15

Thanks, what do you mean by “Blend of Primaries” ? Do you label all frames of a Bracket as an example?

16

Sorry for the short hand there. Yeah, any image intended to be used as hdr, focus stack or pano is color coded purple in Lightroom using the library module. You can use colors for categorization and then filter by color.

By blend of primaries, I just mean that purple is a combo of blue and red. So in my mind purple means “blend it.” The other color codes I use are gray for an image planned for monochrome and red when I think an image is done and no further processing is needed.

ML

17

I use something similar Red is a Master Yellow Working on Blue Print ready Green Lab adjusted Purple Web Quality

18

Doug;

I do a lot of focus stacking too. On my Nikon Z8, I can set it up so each focus stack is saved in a separate folder. In Helicon Focus, I can directly batch process those RAW-image folders and save the results in a separate folder as RAW DNG files. If I have a lot of focus stack sets to process in Helicon Focus, I get it all set up, and then take a coffee break/fix lunch/do my daily exercises while my computer crunches away.

For example, I take 20 sets of focus stacked images, each focus stack consists of 50 RAW shots (they’re macro subjects), which results in 1,000 images. I batch process these RAW files first in Helicon Focus, which leaves me only one folder with 20 stacked images that I then import into Lightroom.

[Oh, I almost forgot, the RAW DNG files that Helicon Focus outputs, can be treated as any other RAW file in Lightroom. For example, instead of importing them into Lightroom first, then denoising all 1,000 images, before processing in Helicon Focus, I just reverse the process, in which case I only need to denoise 20 images.]

Easy-Peasy!

Cheers,
Franz

19

WOW quite a process!