Steve Perry's Focus Shift Shooting workshop

[Pa]

That's a waste in my mind in situations when there is no infinity to "stop" the camera and even in some situations where the lens can focus at infinity. Capturing four to six times more images than is needed will cause the shutter to die sooner than is necessary. Thought that may not be a practical concern, one never knows until the shutter has died whether it should have been a concern. After getting used to the number of captures that are needed in a given situation, my experience is that we can narrow the number of images down to no more than twice as many as are needed.

I think his advice will be different when discussing macro focus stacking. I haven't gotten to that part yet.

And of course when the Z5, Z6, or Z7 are set to silent shutter mode, which he recommends for focus shift shooting, there is no physical shutter movement.

 

[Mike Buckley]

silent shutter mode, which he recommends for focus shift shooting

Hopefully he clarifies that to avoid the times when using silent shutter mode is not advisable. As an example, most of the time I use focus shifting is when I do tabletop photography using compact fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lighting combined with silent shutter mode apparently is a no-no.

 

[Palouse]

Hopefully he clarifies that to avoid the times when using silent shutter mode is not advisable. As an example, most of the time I use focus shifting is when I do tabletop photography using compact fluorescent lights. Fluorescent lighting combined with silent shutter mode apparently is a no-no.

He has addressed using flash and other lights a couple of times—yup!

 

[Clix Pix]

Would LED lighting be less problematic than fluorescent when it comes to silent shutter mode?

 

[Mike Buckley]

Would LED lighting be less problematic than fluorescent when it comes to silent shutter mode?

Hogan's comment about that: "You may see flicker or banding when shooting under frequency-based lighting (fluorescent, mercury vapor, sodium, and LED). That’s because the electronic shutter is a rolling shutter—it only gathers light from a narrow band at a time, slowly moving down the sensor band by band. You may need to set your shutter speed longer than 1/15 so as to not get pattern interference in frequency-based lighting. Noise has a tendency to be higher, as the sensor never gets a full chance to zero out the electron storage between shots."

 

[Clix Pix]

Yes, I've seen several comments from various people on photography sites regarding the infamous "rolling shutter" and banding/flickering. When I am shooting something out in my kitchen, which has an overhead fluorescent light fixture, I definitely do not use silent shutter mode in there for exactly this reason or I don't turn on the overhead light in the first place. Until this particular discussion I hadn't thought about this with respect to LED as well...... I guess I'll have to experiment with silent shutter and the Ice Light 2 at some point, just to see what happens. Really not a big deal to me one way or the other, as it doesn't matter in most of my shooting situations whether I'm in silent shutter mode or regular mode.

I still have not yet ventured into focus stacking, but maybe this winter I will take a shot at it.....

 

[Pa]

In the macro stacking discussion he uses 87 images to get a focus stack of a flower. He does the stacking using Helicon Focus, my preferred program. He goes into great detail about the three methods available in HF and the parameters that can be varied. I've learned a great deal from this discussion.

 

[Mike Buckley]

He goes into great detail about the three methods available in HF and the parameters that can be varied.

For a refresher course, the Helicon website provides very helpful information about that. I don't know if it's more, less or the same provided by Perry's tutorial.

 

[Pa]

For a refresher course, the Helicon website provides very helpful information about that. I don't know if it's more, less or the same provided by Perry's tutorial.

I was planning to look there to see how it compares with Steve's presentation.

So far, and I have a few more modules to go, he hasn't discussed the pros and cons of using fewer images with a larger interval.

In the macro example, he stacks the 87 images using all three methods and with different settings for radius and smoothing and compares the results.

 

[alexf]

I only have a D500 and D700 which do not have built-in Focus Stacking - would this work ok doing it manually? (tripod I guess).
Not my style but something nice to learn.

I guess I can use it with watches or my wife's tin robot collection. Flowers in the botanical gardens are out as the wind makes this not possible.

 

[Mike Buckley]

would this work ok doing it manually?

Yes. Jim seems to do it manually more often than using the automated method. Long before the days of automated mechanisms built into the cameras, everyone that did it had to do it manually.

 

[Pa]

would this work ok doing it manually? (tripod I guess).

Yes. Jim seems to do it manually more often than using the automated method.

My method works if only a few exposures are required. Using the automated feature of modern Nikon cameras will certainly produce more sharply detailed results.

My limitation at the moment is that my only camera with the focus shift feature is the Z6, which is full frame. I have no full-frame AF-S macro lenses. And of course we don't yet have a native Z-mount macro.

 

[Butlerkid]

There is now a link to download the entire video at once. It is about 7.5 gb........

However, when I try to extract the files I get the following error message:

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[Mike Buckley]

I have no full-frame AF-S macro lenses. And of course we don't yet have a native Z-mount macro.

That's exactly why I use my combination of the D7000, the Tamron auto focus lens, and the CamRanger to focus bracket the images. It's the only way I can use automated focus bracketing of macro shots without buying other equipment.

 

[Pa]

That's exactly why I use my combination of the D7000, the Tamron auto focus lens, and the CamRanger to focus bracket the images. It's the only way I can use automated focus bracketing of macro shots without buying other equipment.

I could buy a 105/2.8 AF-S but I think I'll hold out for a native Z macro.

 

[Palouse]

I could buy a 105/2.8 AF-S but I think I'll hold out for a native Z macro.

I avoid macro, except what I can do with my extension rings. Some day . . . .

 

[Clix Pix]

I absolutely adore my 90mm macro lens and to date it is my most-used lens over the past year -- well, ten and a half months, since that's as long as I've actually had it. The thing all but leaps on to my camera body, ready to play! This lens just so, so suits one of my main shooting styles.....

 

[Pa]

Steve has a very nice and detailed discussion of the image editing features of Helicon Focus. I have never explored those, but they are very powerful. You can copy pixels from any of your individual images into your final stacked image, or even from a stack made using a different method. This allows you to correct small errors or artifacts very effectively.

 

[tony-b]

There is now a link to download the entire video at once. It is about 7.5 gb........

However, when I try to extract the files I get the following error message:

View attachment 1671894

Karen - Download and use 7zip for the decompression. It is much more reliable and has more features than the default Windows utility.