{"id":8364,"date":"2024-02-18T17:01:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-18T17:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8364"},"modified":"2024-02-18T17:01:34","modified_gmt":"2024-02-18T17:01:34","slug":"starting-with-focus-stacking-a-technical-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8364","title":{"rendered":"Starting with Focus Stacking – a technical post"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don’t belong to a camera club but I have joined my local U3A photography group for whom a do a lot of presentations on different subjects. This week I did a short presentation of Focus Stacking which is a technique used mostly in close-up and macro photography to give a greater depth of field (the amount of the subject that is in focus).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In preparation for this I did a fair amount of testing both at the taking stage and the processing stage. For much of the presentation I used photographs of a ruler so that the depth of field can be easily observed. Here is an example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Single example image using a ruler<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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10 images stacked using a ruler to show increased depth of field<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

You can see from the above before\/after slider how much the depth of field has increased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned a lot from preparing for this – up to now I had only occasionally dabbled with the topic. I discovered that a lot of the information about this subject was either: simply wrong, a re-hash of the manual, or copying someone else’s work! This is why I took many photographs of a ruler so as to determine, for example, how my camera’s focus stacking feature works (particularly the ‘step’ amount), how to use a focus rail and bellows, and different ways of getting close on a budget:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A budget set-up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Above is an example that I used of a budget macro set-up for under \u00a3100 (excluding camera and tripod).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As well as talking about the taking of the photographs I discussed the processing and have followed this up with more information and timings. For this I used a set of 30 images taken for focus stacking and processed them in: Photoshop, Affinity 2, Helicon Focus, and Photoshop Elements with the Elements+ add-on – this is of interest to many in the group as they can only use Elements. Below is a comparison\/slider showing the first image used and the results of stacking 30 images together. Note that these photographs were expressly taken for demonstrating the technique, including the background:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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First image of a 30-image stack<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Stacked image from 30 photos using Elements+<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

For the timings I used the same set of 30 images and got the following results:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Software used<\/td>Time in seconds<\/td>Memory used<\/td><\/tr>
Photoshop Elements +<\/td>177<\/td>18GB<\/td><\/tr>
Photoshop<\/td>120<\/td>17GB<\/td><\/tr>
Affinity 2<\/td>94<\/td>4Gb<\/td><\/tr>
Helicon Focus<\/td>3<\/td>5GB<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Table of results<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

All together an interesting exercise which was well received.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t belong to a camera club but I have joined my local U3A photography group for whom a do a lot of presentations on different subjects. This week I did a short presentation of Focus Stacking which is a technique used mostly in close-up and macro photography to give a greater depth of field … Continue reading “Starting with Focus Stacking – a technical post”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,86,22,3,65,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-close-up","category-focus-stacking","category-macro","category-photography","category-technical","category-tests-and-trials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8364"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8375,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8364\/revisions\/8375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}