I woke up early and we had a dusting of snow. This was my chance to get a photo Snow Trillium in snow. It didn’t quite work out how I envisioned it. The closest area to home where Snow Trillium live didn’t get snow (flakes) but graupel. Graupel is when the snow is little round balls instead of flakes.
Snow Trillium is a late winter, early spring flower. It grows close to the ground and only in areas of exposed limestone or dolomite. As you can imagine, I took this photo while laying on the ground and it was cold and wet.
Specific Feedback Requested
I consider this a ‘learning curve’ photo. I know that there are many technical things wrong about the photo. I welcome all CC but I ask you to comment on techniques I used and my thoughts on current focus rail use. How do you setup and use a focus rail?
Focus rail: The first few times I used my focus rail, I focused on the subject and didn’t consider the space before and after. I overcame this by determining what I wanted in focus through out the photo.
Composition framing error: This is large DOF photo. I failed to take into consideration the framing on the subject as I moved closer with my camera. I would have liked to have more space to the right of the flower.
To ensure composition: I setup my camera/focus rail to focus on the nearest part of my photo then move the camera on the focus rail to the farthest point I want in focus without shooting. I make adjustments to my camera position to ensure I have the composition I want throughout all the photos. (I do take note the starting and ending points on my focusing rail scale)
Focus rail use: After I have the my camera setup for composition I return the focus rail to the start position and refocus for my first shot. I use PhotoPills DoF to calculate how much I want to advance the focus rail for each shot. I know that each full turn on my focus rail is 1.25mm.
I believe two things happen while making the exposures for this photo. First: I believe that a slight breeze moved the foreground leaf causing blur you see in the leaf tips. Second: I believe that I bumped the focus rail about half way through shooting. This shifted everything. I overcame this by stacking the photos in groups (before and after bump) and then manually blending the groups. I’m much more careful adjusting the focus rail for the next shot now. It’s not as solid as I would like.
My last thought is aperture. I seam to be using 5.6 a lot when shooting on a focus rail. I’m not sure why. What are your thoughts about aperture?
Technical Details
f8 | 1/125s | ISO 100 | 100mm - Canon 5D IV with EF100 macro lens
33 shot focus stack using a focusing rail and a off camera flash w/softbox
David, first, only folks who have done atmospheric science work talk about graupel… . I do love how the grittiness of the term fits what’s falling from the sky. I did a stacking workshop for NPN a while back, (here). I agree that the area around the leaf tip in the lower left looks like a motion artifact. You don’t specify your stacking software. As my workshop shows there are significant problems with using Photoshop for stacking. If you use other software, artifacts like that lower leaf edge can (sometimes) be fixed while still in the stacking software. The front edge of the horizontal green leaf is also soft. That could be a stacking artifact of it’s also possible that the shot where that leaf edge would have been sharp also had some motion blur. Overall, I like what you tried to do here and it looks good in the smaller views. That’s another thing to keep in mind as you stack…how big will you display the result? Smaller displays can hide quite a few artifacts…
Hey David - I meant to comment on this yesterday, but got sidetracked. I like this view of the forest floor. I spend a lot of time down there myself. The composition is pleasing with the flower seeming to lean into the frame. The curl of leaf below is nice as well. I’d have done more clean up on the scene here if it were mine, but that’s an individual thing.
As Mark points out, there are some stacking errors and artifacts scattered throughout, particularly noticeable in the leaf litter around the snow, but also elsewhere and in the flower petals and bracts. When this happens to me it’s usually because I didn’t have enough overlap of focus between each photo. I don’t use rails, but camera controlled focus bracketing and it can still show up if the steps between focus points are too far apart with an aperture too narrow. Usually with some trial and error you can figure out which combination of f/stop and distance between photos will get you the best results. Ideally you want some overlap, but not so much that you have a lot of pictures to work through.
When this happens to me I can sometimes correct it with the stacking software itself. You don’t say what you use, but I use Zerene and if you look at my Whitelip snail post, you’ll see that I took the best areas of focus from 5 photos and blended them in retouching where the focus stack broke down due to the subject moving between frames. If they align well enough it usually looks pretty good. You could have a go with that here, painting away repetitions and repeated patterns the stacking software created.
In terms of aperture, I let the background decide me on that. If I want a very smooth background, at least in a few of the photos, I choose a wider one, but that will mean you have to capture more images in the field and use a smaller step between them. Meaning move the focus rail a smaller distance each time. If the background is to be included in a flat scene for example, or if it’s a very far distance behind, you can stop down and still have the background you want. Fewer photos in the field and you can move the camera a longer distance between them as well.
I also see some “goopiness” around bits of the snow that could mean you created a DMap stack - depth mapping sometimes misses areas where there is a bigger difference in focus point from one frame to the next whereas PMax might get it. If I choose a DMap image for my starting point I will often paint in details from the PMax image during retouching. If this is all new to you, I apologize. Those are the two methods Zerene and Helicon Focus stacking apps use to create the final merged image. They have their good and bad points, but often one or the other works well enough to start with.
Phew. Sorry to be so long-winded. I do a lot of stacking too, and while I haven’t ever done webinars like Mark has, I have written a couple of blog posts about field/capture best practices and processing. I can link to those if you’d like.
Hi Mark, Thank you for taking the time to comment and provide you expertise on my photo. I want to apologize for the tardiness of my reply, but I wanted to view your workshop before replying. Very informative and reiterated that I have so much more to learn. For example, I was only vaguely aware that dedicated stacking software was available. Now I have some research to do to figure out which software I want to purchase. BTW, the photo I posted was stacked using PS-23.
NPN is the forum I have been looking for. At this stage of my growth, I’m looking for constructive criticism. Posting on FB and getting pats on the back isn’t making me a better photographer.
Hi Kris, I apologize for my tardiness in replying. Thank you for sharing your expertise and CC. As I told Mark, I was only vaguely aware that dedicated stacking software was available.
In the future, I will pay closer attention to my DOF. Which leads me to a question. Is there a general ‘rule of thumb’ for focus overlap? Regardless, I will need to start taking field notes so that I can determine what apertures and focus overlaps are working for me. BTW, I used PS-23 to focus stack my image.
Can you send the links to your blog post? I would love to read them.
Last, NPN is the forum I have been looking for. At this stage of my growth, I need constructive criticism. You and Mark have provided what I need. Pats on the back may feel good, but I doesn’t make me a better photographer.
I wish there was a rule of thumb, but it’s pretty lens-dependent. A lot of my success with stacking comes from my failures. Now I’ve been doing it for a couple years, I have a better feel for what will work in the field with my particular gear. Here’s the link to the first blog post and you can follow to the second from there. Hope it helps and just remember, we’re all learning and honing our craft.
. I do love how the grittiness of the term fits what’s falling from the sky. I did a stacking workshop for NPN a while back, (