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Re: [OM] WTFocus Stacking`

Subject: Re: [OM] WTFocus Stacking`
From: DZDub <jdubikins@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2022 16:08:32 -0500
On Sun, Jul 17, 2022 at 11:18 PM Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 7/17/2022 6:03 PM, Wayne Harridge wrote:
> > Thanks Joel, it looks like a fair bit of experimentation will be
> required to
> > work out the best combination of aperture/focus differential/number of
> shots
> > for a few lenses & focal lengths.
>
> How are you going to remember all that, standing at the edge of a swamp,
> aiming at a dragonfly? Perhaps a difference is
> that I see FS/FB as hand held, dynamic, and some folks may see them as
> tripod stuff, to be done with thoughtful care?
>

There isn't that much to remember, really.

All my recently posted 22 were hand held, often in the moment. The cute
> little flutterby, looking down at me? Caught my
> peripheral vision. Mike and Marnie's car had already left the restaurant,
> ours about to leave, brought camera up, FB on,
> pressed the button twice, two good stacks, walked on without holding
> anyone up.
>
> My FB settings are 31 shots, Focus Differential 1. If the subject is
> really deep, I may up the number of shots. Any
> lens, any FL.
>

My FS/FB shots have all been handheld.  You have a proven methodology,
which works and doesn't include FS.  It involves HF, which is an excellent
tool.  No reason for you to go back to school.


> With the E-M5 II, if I recall, I had two settings, 21 slices and 31. The
> E-M1 II is faster, and the OM-1 much faster, so
> I skip the 21 setting now. Dumping files in the bit bucket later is free;
> coming up short isn't.
>
> This isn't MPG, mortgage interest rate, etc. folks. It's just ephemeral
> files that may be erased at no cost. What's the
> point of finding the edge that minimizes zero?
>
> I mean to retry FS; I've set it up on a button . . . but I'm learning my
> 12-200, and it isn't eligible. I've set it to
> 15 slices, @ Focus Differential 2. Some day, I may find out how it works.
>

I enjoy the instant feedback from FS, so I have been building on that.  So
far some of my more satisfying stacks have come as a result of culling a
smaller number of frames from the 15 I've got the camera set to shoot and
these are then stacked using HF or Picolay.  With HF I can "short stack"
the ORFs, whereas my camera has (I think) aligned the jpgs to create its
own jpg output.  I don't seem to get a better result working with ORFs over
and above the jpgs.  So I'm just going to work with jpgs for  FS/FB
processes going forward.

In answer to your "standing on a wet log, one foot in the air" scenario --
my plan would be just to shoot focus brackets when known to be going into
the Unknown.  When I do this, by the way, shooting wide open and 30 frames
at interval 1, I've not yet used more than 2/3 of the photos in a stack.
But I think this is a good number.  I'll stick with it.  I feel like I can
generally improve particularly the OOF portion of in-camera stacks by using
fewer than the 15 photos the camera works with.  Another benefit to doing a
"short stack" from the photos the camera has used in FS is there is no
automatic crop of the resulting image.  I've saved a couple images I liked
that I had failed to frame with sufficient margins so that the camera
cropped off something I really wanted in the final image.

Joel W.
-- 
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