On Sat, Jul 23, 2022 at 5:12 PM Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Bottom line; I can't see a reliable use for Focus stacking. OK, I may
> have, by chance, chosen a particularly difficult
> subject. That seems to me to be an advantage. I think worst case is the
> best test of whether a function is reliable. YMMV.
>
Part of me wants to say Why are you putting yourself through this? You
have a proven methodology in FB and HF. What do you need this for?
But I would say, if so asked, because it's there, and so forth. We're
probably both idiots of one sort or another, possibly the same sort. :)
I'm still figuring out what I want to do with FS. I think it works pretty
well where what you're trying to achieve is fairly modest. You want to get
a large flower in complete focus without making the background look like
it's f64. Shoot at f4 not f.2.8, 2-3 intervals, not 1 -- this is pretty
reliable even if I usually want to push for more. If you get a decent jpg
at the end, you know that you can probably make a little improvement
further with HF and selected slices. You can definitely improve the
background with HF. 15/1/wide open has not produced many good results for
me, same as what seems to have happened to you. 15/2 might be quite
reasonable. I've had some good results 15/1/stop down 1. Play with the
stop to "bracket" the stack and see if it's OK. Something like that is the
hypothesis I'm heading for.
The process has rarely gone completely haywire for me, but I have had one
almost inexplicable failure, and I think it might have been because there
was "air" or a focus "gap" between the back of one flower and the start of
a second one. By contrast, it's done some amazing things. You may have
noticed that the actual shots are completed before the camera shows the
"busy" countdown screen. I once pulled away from the composition before
the actual shots were all finished. The last two shots were "air shots" as
I was moving the camera. The camera didn't care and made a decent stack
from the 10 or so good shots it had.
I know that there are differences in lenses in focus stacking, for just
plain and obvious reasons, but the difference between my two lenses in FS
success is less than I had anticipated. I get acceptable FS shots with the
12-40 but almost as many acceptable ones with the 100-400. I think the
latter can be somewhat softer, especially as light intensity fades and the
camera reaches limits of IS and speed, but probably the disaster that
wind/moving air causes to photographs is just so much more devastating
within the close focus range of the lens and its incredible magnification.
No difference between FB and FS in regard to wind! The second and third
shots in FS are always throwaways for me. I wish I had the option to
dispense with that feature.
Right now I've got C4 set up for FS at 15/2 and I would probably shoot
first wide open and then stop down 1 if the focus doesn't get deep enough.
If I switch C4 to FB at something like 30/1/wide open, I think I will
likely get good results most of the time but not the instant feedback of
the jpg, but I know I would never switch to FS in the field. I could use
C3 for FS and C4 for FB. This might make some sense for me to do, at least
for a while. I need a rainy day at the computer to evaluate it all!
Joel W.
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