Well if I can get anywhere near the fly in the Helicon Focus page then I will be dead chuffed.

Interesting show of how a stack is focussed. Maybe I needed more than 15 images for my sample.

Harry, do you have any other samples you could post here.

Don

Hi Don.

Sorry, no I do not have any samples apart from the one embedded.
Only this series of photos taken just a few moments ago as an example.

I have just fired of 6 shots all hand held using flash, so excuse the quality.

You mentioned the spurious effect that you experience using ZM. I guess this is the rotational affect on the extreme edges of the image, hence the need to crop. This does not happen when using Helicon. So the attached images are uncropped and apart from levels and USM no post processing.

As this has been a rush job please excuse the quality.

Harry

Thanks for that Wolfie - looks good but I definitely DON'T like the idea of a time limited Licence. I notice you are feeding our little green friends again:)

Andy, you could always pay the £126.80, then there's no time limit :)
As an alternative you cold also dump the Mac :) :) and use Combine ZM

Harry

Nice ones Harry. Stevie cringed at the wildlife. :eek:

For Lello and others I have had another go. Pushing the boundarys a bit but then I want to do this for free so I'll stick with CZM.

I had a bit of a problem trying to do the lathe. I needed a 28mm lens to get it in, and due to the inherently wide dof manually focussing accurately along various points that I could later identify for this post was a nightmare. So an alternative subject had to be found where I could mentally note the focus points between frames, hence this choice of currently completed workshop projects. Repaired ballhead, rotating base and stub centre column on Manfrotto 055 tripod.

Manual refocussing of the lens between frames was chosen as opposed to my Micro plate. This was to confirm that it could be done for the benefit of those without such a plate. Aperture was kept to a shallow f8, again to check the effect over a subject with a depth of 130mm. 9 focus points over 130mm of depth is probably the fewest I would currently recommend. Camera was set to jpeg medium fine again to replicate a fairly worse case scenario for those that do not use RAW. ( I can sense Foxy's thoughts from here. :D :D )

Attatched images :
1) Image with explanitory notes
2) The first frame at focus point 1 to show dof at f8
3) The final stacked image

Don

This image looks a bit up Andy's street :) and is image 9 from the stack overlayed on to image 1 to give an idea of how magnification changes as focus alters.

It also shows how nifty this program is when arriving at the final result and the benefit of providing sufficient frames to help it do that.

Don

Don, Again an excellent example of focus stacking, but just one point, especially when using a focus rail (screw/worm drive) you only need to establish your first point of focus, then depending on the thread size just give it 1-2 revolutions to obtain the varying focus points.

not quite so simple when you're out in the field hand holding the camera.

Harry

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Can it handle those frames then ?

Don

Don I agree - those separate frames need some of my playthings on them - how about a bright orange "Rudra Glass" base plus a little solarization?? Definite possibilities ;) - Still think its a bit pricey Harry - cannot deplete the D3 fund as I have a bad attack of NAS (Nikon Acquisition Syndrome) at the moment!! :o

The short answer is yes, but out in the field I would use a small aperture such as f/16 - f/22 so as to obtain maximum DOF and only take approx 5-6 images. Occasionally discarding one image.
Obviously these 5 images will not be perfectly aligned, I think this is why we need to allow for cropping so as to crop out the rotational effect on the extreme edges. (Rotational being my description for what I assume you mean by spurious information)

Harry