The Dead and Dying

Back to the Truck and Car graveyard today…

This was my first attempt at using the focus stacking setup in my Nikon D850 and am pretty pleased wit the results. This was 7 stack shots

Specific Feedback Requested

So, how’d I do?

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
D850 24-120 @ 55mm, f/8, 1/50, ISO 200

Focus Stacked worked quite well sir. I really like this. I gotta find a car graveyard around here.
Cheers,
David

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So when you say the stacking method do you mean this is a single image produced by the camera or did you bracket several exposures and combine them in Zerene or Helicon? Either way it came out nicely although I’m not sure you would have needed to stack a scene like this. So much character in those old vehicles. I think that comes through well. The patches of sky well, I’d like them to go away, but what can you do? Also would like a little more detail in the shadows under the truck. Maybe you could bring them up subtly? Just a thought.

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I set a primary focus point in camera and told the camera that I wanted 7 shots starting there and moving backward. It did as I asked. In ACR, I selected all after processing and took the option of loading them into a stack in PS, then did my merge from there. It was really dark under that beast of a car and other than what I did, all other efforts to extract more detail ended up being muddy…it is possible, I suppose but may be outside my current operational knowledge. If you take this into photoshop, you can see why I chose to use the stack here and mind you, this is my first effort at focus stacking, but sure won’t be the last.

Ok gotcha. My G9 can do focus bracketing (like what you describe) but it also does focus stacking in camera which produces a jpeg with mixed results so I don’t use it much.

This thread may help you in your Stacking journey -

I use Zerene and so do a few other folks here on NPN, but Helicon Focus is another dedicated stacker that will do a better job than Photoshop.

I like the subject, colors, lighting and composition. The stacking result looks good, but hard to know without comparing at least the 2 end points. Looks like PS handled this one OK – where it fails is in areas with a lot of overlap where the OOF frames have a lot of bloom – think of a closeup of a hibiscus flower.

My eye is pulled to the right edge by the half-wheel, which I would crop off.

I am rapidly discovering the shortcomings of using PS to stack and relying on in-camera focusing app per their algorithm but I needed a place to start, get feedback and go forward. I looked at the Seaver information but I cannot figure out from Helicon’s site whether I can use their program in PS or if it is only relegated to LR.

I use Helicon as a standalone application. I process my images in Capture One, synchronize them and then save them out to Tiff. I then open Helicon and do the stacking from there. Finally I save a new Tiff and get rid of the individual ones…just one way to do it. :smirk:

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Until recently I used Zerene in the same way - exported TIFFs and dragged them into the working panel. Now I use a plug-in for Lightroom that exports directly to the app and discards the TIFFs when returned to the catalog. Easier for me, but the results are the same.

With Zerene there are two algorithms, one of which requires a hail Mary slider move, so I do both and sometimes have to repeat the one with the slider. Then I stack the two in PS and mask between the two to remove any funky areas. Zerene also has an editing function that lets me brush over any funky areas in the final version from one of the source files that is good in that area. OCD.

I love the colors. They look so… Uniform? Can’t really explain it, there are no strong shadows, no strong highlights. It’s almost as if the scene were lit in a studio. Or if it was a really good computer rendering, like a video game.

I’m less convinced by the angle though. I feel like I’m missing things, with most of the cars being out of sight. I think I would have preferred a different composition.

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