Trying Focus Stacking using the camera to change the focus. I see why everyone likes to do that because it sure is easy. I took 50 frames set to narrow focus 1 which is the finest setting. I guess that is how much the focus uses. I used Zerene PMax, Helicon C stack (2nd image) and the 3rd image is what the camera created and saved as a JPEG. I won’t use this feature but I wanted to see how well it could do. I plan to take more this weekend at the Gardens
Specific Feedback Requested
Any tips on using auto shooting is helpful
Technical Details
Canon R7 rf 100 f/2.8 f/8 1/6 sec iso 200 No Post processing except stacking
Great idea, Dean. My eyes are that great these days, but at least for me, I can not see much difference between the three version. Did you feel that one system worked better than the other?
With this example, @linda_mellor the in-camera stacking did pretty well. However, other examples not so hot. I prefer to do my own stacking, but it was interesting to see how this feature worked. Zerene was pretty quick and easy which was nice and, in most cases, Zerene and Helion worked about the same. There is one feature that is in Helicon I did not find in the other was fixing the stacked image. For example, say the yellow flower was blurry, there is an option to select a sharper image with the flower in focus, and use the brush to paint over the stack images replacing the area under the brush with the selected image. I think they added this because of ghosting where there was movement in the image. However, at 30 frames per second which the R7 uses with focusing stacking, not much time for anything to move. I will purchase the other because I don’t mind having 2 programs that do the same thing and I am not sure if 30 days is long enough for me to learn Zerene well.
I may stop using the focus rail, @Shirley_Freeman. This is much easier to get images for stacking and it is fast. However, if I want to keep a 1:1 macro, this is where the focus rail will help because focus is not changed in the lens.
This is in the Edit-Start retouching menu in Zerene. It’s a breeze and works the same way -you choose your source image and that paints to the target image (whether Pmax or Dmap). Congrats on starting out. It’s addictive!
