Focus Stacking - Stargazer Lily

[cgipson1]

Just playing with focus stacking.... find it interesting. C&C welcome....

 

[jrice12]

It has artistic value, but it does have that "cut-and-past" look to it. Not sure the stacking concept works well with this kind of image. However, taken as art the image is good - like the lower right background choice. Are the leaf tip over-exposed or are there simply no details there?

 

[ChrisA]

Stack worked well - did you do it manually or use some software ? If so what ?

Agree with above about the blown highlights in the tip. Maybe adjustable in PP ?

 

[D-B-J]

I'm not sure stacking works for this image. I mean, you stacked nicely, but i don't personally like it here.

 

[cgipson1]

I did the stack using a manual rail, and put the stack together with Helicon Focus. I am just now learning to use the software and this is only the third or fourth time I have tried stacking... and never something that needed nearly 4" of DOF. I got some slight ghosting just from the amount of movement on the camera... need to work on aligning the angles properly to prevent the ghosting. I cleaned the ghosting up in in PS manually... which accounts for the edges being softer than they should be.

I purposely blew the whites out a little to add a little more contrast... there was not a whole lot of detail there anyway.

The image doesn't really show that the flower is nearly 4" long... and that is why I stacked it, I wanted to get it sharp all of the way from the tip to the bottom of the interior. When viewed in a larger image, I was not totally successful in that... it only has about 75% sharp focus for the entire length, mostly due to more ghosting. I have seen some shots with wonderful amounts of detail, and am trying to learn to do that.

A learning experience.. and I will continue playing with it.. more for fun than anything else. I appreciate the critique, and if anyone has any suggestions on how to improve on this particular skill..... I would love to hear them.

 

[Overread16 4]

Out of interest what kind of surface did you have the flower and camera on and was it windy? A surface that shifts (esp something like carpet that shifts as you move around) is a nightmare to work with when stacking because even with tripod and rails it will move around - wind is another thing to keep an eye on (sometimes a mobile light "box" can be a great thing to slip over a subject to reduce wind) and breath, if you get right over your subject even your own breathing can move and cause problems.

The cut and past feeling that some are mentioning is because I can see some of the ghosting and details surrounding the subject, rather than a nice pure black background; the lack of a leading line (in this case the stem of the flower) can also give it a chopped/cut feeling.

However in addition to that the nature of focus stacking can also introduce its own artificial look. Because you boost the depth of field over a select area, often using a wider aperture rather than a smaller one, you can end up with a photo that looks like the background is artificially blurred, because of the sudden and sharp divide between the out of focus and in-focus areas. A trick around this is to use smaller apertures at each end of the focus stack (or at the far end only if there is no foreground parts out of focus). That way you get a more natural appearing drift into the out of focus areas.

It might go something like - f4, f4, f4, f4, f4 f5.6, f8, f13 - for example, but you can experiment and play to find a style that suits your needs.
Of course with a black background photo this method is of less use, but its a good one to know for when you've a more promenant background.


From there we've also the exposure side of things, strictly speaking you should be careful when overexposing key points of a photo because our eyes naturally focus on the brighter points of a photo first, and I'm fairly sure that the middle of the flower is more where you want our eyes not the edges of the petals. You should be able to get the contrast up without blowing sections of the photo, though you may well have to use selective contrast increases with layermasks to help avoid blowing the whites.

 

[cgipson1]

I have a lot to learn about using the software, and the actual stacking technique also.

I was using a dark green fabric for a background.. it is one of the cheaper quasi-velvets (crushed something or other.. sorry, don't remember the name.) I like it because it depending on lighting and DOF, it will pick up sparkles in the background which is nice for some shots. Slightly reflective.

The ghosting was caused by a mistake I made. The Rail was not on the same plane as the subject and so the subject was actually moving up in the frame as I moved the camera incrementally down the rail. This caused a feathery effect that was most visible at the tips of the petals.. (won't make that mistake again.. not if I can help it at least). I cleaned it up in PS as best I could, but definitely not a PS wiz! I also wiped out part of the visible background to just leave that one corner, for contrast.

I will watch the contrast.. that is a good point. I am still a novice at using layermasks.. need to improve my post skills a lot! I had not thought about using various apertures either.. I can see where that would improve the image.

I really love the suggestions.. and this is helping me to see what I did wrong and giving me some ideas where I need to change things up. I will be posting more photos... hopefully there will be visible improvement each time.

How does one deal with the actual enlargement of the subject as the camera moves closer to it? I assume that the software should compensate, since I doubt that it is possible to compensate while shooting using a rail?

Thanks!

 

[jrice12]

PS should have a scale capability to resize the image. Unfortunately it will be trial and error. Doesn't Helicon have scale/rot/offset correction in it? Or do you present it with aligned and scaled images?

 

[cgipson1]

Yes.. it has those functions, but I probably need to tweak them. I suspect that my alignment error exceeded the current settings ability to deal with them. Need to learn the software better, which is one reason I am doing stacks. Learning this technique from the ground up. Thanks for the tip....

 

[Overread16 4]

Also another point - as well as the settings within the program itself, focus stacking is an area where, whilst there is no market leader, the subtle differences between different software options mean that sometimes one program and give a good stack whilst others might fail or give less than ideal results. Personally I consider the effort that goes into getting photos for a stack makes it worth investing in the other options.

Far as I know the following options are on the market:
Helicon Focus
Combine ZP (freeware)
Zerene Stacker
Photoshop CS5 has stacking options. (though this one is somewhat more expensive ).

Out of interest have you tried the 3D effect simulator in Helicon?

 

[cgipson1]

CS5 is on the wishlist... I am debating taking a class, just for the student discount.. it is huge!

The Helicon (trial version) is the only software I have tried so far.. although will probably want to try the others before actually purchasing something. Most just playing with it right now.. to determine whether I want to buy software.

I have not tried the 3D Sim in Helicon (is is available in the trial?).. but will do that soon. Be interesting to see what it does. Will post on that when I get the chance also....

I am actually thinking about trying the Helicon Remote and try stacking with that. Since it would be controlling the focus of the lens precisely, rather than my manual and imprecise rail movements.. I think it would do a much better job. Any thoughts here?

 

[ChrisA]

Certainly worth trying with helicon remote. I've tried that with good results on my 100mm. Takes out your adjustment failures as you say.

Obviously not something that is easily portable in the field, but indoors it's worth a go.

This one I did last year was a 50 odd images stack at F2.8 using it. One stacking artifact from the result - but did no tweaking on the stack.

 

[cgipson1]

nice stack! That is what I am after basically... I actually have one that turned out fairly well, except for some of the same ghosting I was having trouble with on the lily... I was actually in the field at a local NWR.

 

[ChrisA]

Nice try - i see the ghosting. In helicon (not sure of the demo) you can adjust the ghosting by selecting each layer after stack then clone in/out.

I did not do it in the coins - but have done on others.

 

[cgipson1]

Thanks.. will try that...