First Focus Stack Attempt

[mcliffy2]

Here is my first attempt at focus stacking. Since I was using 100mm macro with some distance (I had to crop the stacked pic), I only stacked 4 photos. Constructive criticism and suggestions are welcome.

 

[Reef Pets]

Looks awesome! I know nothing about photo stacking but I am sure that gparr and junior will chime in.

 

[JuniorMC8704]

Looks very nice.

try using a faster f-stop, and stack 8-16 photos. Youll notice a big difference.

What program are you using? Helicon Focus?

 

[SaraB]

It's a really good first start Mike!

 

[mcliffy2]

reefpets and Sara - thanks much.

junior - I'm using a 30 day trial of Helicon. What F-Stop would you recommend? I was using F9 (I was lazy and had the flow on), so I'm guessing if turn the flow off, bump that up a couple stops and increase the flow it will be sharper, correct?

 

[mcliffy2]

Also, what software do you recommend? I have aperture 2 as my main photo editing software. I thought it had stacking built in, but its stack feature is something else entirely. There is nothing free by chance is there?

 

[Hypertek99]

I want to learn how to stack when i get my camera.

 

[JuniorMC8704]

Helicon is the way to go.

Flow MUST be off. Helicon will align the photos properly, but everything needs to be in exactly the same place inside the tank or it will look all fuzzy.

F/9 is perfect, you could even go to F/11. Just make sure you overlap your focus a little. SUPER TINY adjustments all along the way will give you the best results.

Also, just for reference, i use light room to batch process the photos to get them all white balanced. Then i export them as a .TIF files (for whatever reason, this gave Gary the best results, and was the same for me too).

I process the .TIF files in Helicon, and save the final result in .jpg.

If needed, you can then crop and sharpen the image further in PS.

Its quit a process, but well worth the time. Once you get the process down, start to finish wont take more than ten minutes.

Good luck, if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[gparr]

First, your image is too dark. You need a longer exposure to lighten it up. f/8 or so is an adequate aperture for this. Slow your shutter speed down by a stop or two and you'll get a better exposure. It looks like your foreground is a bit out of focus. Start by focusing on the very front of the coral and move your focus point deeper into the scene in small increments. For this scene, I would probably use 10 exposures. You want your depth of field to overlap with each successive shot. If the depth of field doesn't overlap, you'll see a band of out of focus image somewhere in the middle of the photo.

It's a good start. Just keep working with it and you'll get it. Turning off the flow doesn't hurt, either.

Gary

 

[gparr]

Yes, converting the RAW files to tif files in the RAW converter (I use the Adobe RAW converter, but it doesn't matter) will give the best results. Helicon Focus will work with RAW files, but the results are not very good. I also found that using Method B gives better results--Edit, Options. Save your end result as a tif file, then do your normal processing in Photoshop or whatever program you use and save as a jpg for posting. The only processing I do up front is to correct white balance. I then do the stack and do my cropping and other adjustments on the final stacked tif.

You can batch process all of the images for a stack at one time in the RAW converter. Just open all of the RAW files for the stack at once, correct the white balance on one, select all, synchronize, then save all as tif files. You will then get a bunch of tif files with the same numbers as the RAW files.

If you do much stacking with this approach you will chew up a ton of disk space because tif files get quite large. A friend taught me this trick: When you tell the RAW converter to save the files, put them in a "junk" folder until you're done with the image, then delete them. If you have to go back to an image, re-generating the tif files just takes a couple of minutes.

Gary

 

[mcliffy2]

Junior and Gary - thanks much for the tips. I think the flow and Gary's comment are probably related since I had to use a faster shutter speed to compensate for the flow moving the polyps, and thus got a darker picture. I'm out of town this weekend, but I'll be back with a second (and hopefully improved) attempt next week.