Emulating IS with burst shooting and program

A recent purchase of the Canon 180mm macro lens motivated me to find a means of compensating for the lack of IS on this lens. Monopods, tripods and beer are fairly well proven aides. What seems to get less press is shooting bursts of images and picking the sharpest one. This is possibly because this can be a bit of a pain. Well, I think I have found a way to make this much less of a pain. This stems from the observation that when multiple images of the same subject are taken the image with the largest compressed raw or jpg file seems to pretty reliably be the sharpest. With that in mind I whipped up a quick program that identifies bursts of shots and identifies the largest (generally sharpest) one. Some caveats are:

1) This only works for bursts of shots taken of a static scene. The program works by looking for shots taken 0 or 1 second apart, tagging these as a series and tagging the largest file as "sharpest".
2) This only works for compressed raw (Canon) or jpg images.

3) A limited amount of testing has been performed. As a software test engineer I know how hard it is to test one's own software. And please try not to laugh at my coding skills

4) This program is written in Perl which means it should run on multiple platforms. But, I have only tested it on Windoze.

To use this program you need Perl installed and the Exif-tool module.
1) Get Perl from http://perl.com
Version 5.8.8 or later.
2) From the command line use PPM to install ExifTool:
ppm install Image-ExifTool
3) The program is "pmis.pl" (pmis = Poor Man's IS)

Right click on the link below to down load it. Instructions are in the header. Copy it into either perl/bin or the folder you with to run it from.
http://home.comcast.net/~brthomson2/pmis.pl

4) The program defaults to the current folder or you can pass in the folder name. It runs on all .jpg. .CR2 or .DNG files in the folder.

You can test it by:

1) Taking several bursts of shots of a static subject hand held or with a monopod at a shutter speed where some variation in sharpness is expected.
2) Putting the camera files from 1 in a folder.
3) Running pmis.pl on the folder.
The bursts will be named:
s00001
s00002
s00003
etc
Shorts within a burst will be named:
i01
i02
i03
etc
The largest image within a series will be suffixed with "sharpest".
For example:
s00001i01.CR2
s00001i01.jpg
s00001i02.CR2
s00001i02.jpg
s00001i03_sharpest.CR2
s00001i03_sharpest.jpg

Based on my testing I could get at least 1 extra stop hand held or on a monopod by shooting bursts of 5 shots and picking the sharpest one.

At any rate hopefully this is worth more to this community than it cost and will help pay back for some of the invaluable information I have received.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Bill Thomson
'Relentlessly attempting to overcome a lack
of talent with better equipment'

I'd question the assumption that the largest file will be the sharpest. If you imagine shooting birds in flight, I'd think one shot that has a sharp bird and nicely blurred background would be smaller than one of a blurred bird and a sharp background.

But as far as shooting bursts in the hopes that one will be sharp is fairly common.

--
-- Steve

Steve,

You are correct for the scenario you mentioned and my approach and program are not intended for birds in flight or action shots. The approach does seem to work pretty well for the same scenarios where IS would be helpful. I shoot a lot of macro shots of static subjects either hand held or with a monopod and it works pretty well for those. If you are interested you can try the experiment of shooting a burst of shots at a shutter speed about 1 stop slower than you can normally obtain sharp images for hand held or on a monopod. Then I think you will find the largest image is indeed the sharpest at least 80% of the time. I find I can gain at least 1 stop of "sharpness" by shooting a burst of 5 shots and picking the sharpest one.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Bill Thomson
'Relentlessly attempting to overcome a lack
of talent with better equipment'

Why rather than wasting time writing rather useless software if you are serious about macro photography spend the time to learn the techniques for doing good macro work and get the tools it needs.

--
---
****************************************

'Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in the hands of a child.'
Norman Mailer (b. 1923), U.S. author. Newsweek (New York, 22 Oct. 1984)

Stovall said:

Why rather than wasting time writing rather useless software if you
are serious about macro photography spend the time to learn the
techniques for doing good macro work and get the tools it needs.

--
---
****************************************
'Giving a camera to Diane Arbus is like putting a live grenade in
the hands of a child.'
Norman Mailer (b. 1923), U.S. author. Newsweek (New York, 22 Oct.
1984)

Click to expand...

I guess I am just an out of the box thinker that tends to challenge the defacto approach whenever possible. As far a technique goes I do use a monopod but won't go for artificial lighting because I prefer natural lighting. I have seen some splendid work done with ring lights etc but natural subjects in unnatural light just aren't for me. I don't even own an external flash.

Using a tripod and focusing rail also doesn't work for the live insects that are my most common subjects. The subjects generally only stay put for a small period of time and I need to travel light.

At any rate this "useless software" has saved me more time than it cost me to write it. YMMV of course.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Bill Thomson
'Relentlessly attempting to overcome a lack of talent'

Stovall said:

Why rather than wasting time writing rather useless software if you
are serious about macro photography spend the time to learn the
techniques for doing good macro work and get the tools it needs.

Click to expand...

Hey mister Stovall... slow down!!

Why won't you, rather than wasting time writing this kind of useless answer, would spend the time to learn how to be a nice boy?

Bill Thomson. You did very nice program. Congratulations!!

No one should be discouraged from contributing their work to the community, least of all in a classless manner.

There were many ways to make your suggestion without your arrogant opening.

Sorry Bill. Thanks for sharing your work.

Stovall said:

Why rather than wasting time writing rather useless software if you
are serious about macro photography spend the time to learn the
techniques for doing good macro work and get the tools it needs.

Click to expand...

Some Nikon camera's have this... coolpix 5000 . Nikon calls it "Best shot selection"...works pretty good for stationary stuff.
Boris

--
http://public.fotki.com/borysd/
http://www.pbase.com/borysd

Bill,

I've used this burst trick ever since I got my Drebel (300D) about 3 years ago. So far according to my experience the largest file is always the sharpest. Thus I am sure that your program will be very useful. (Obviously I was doing the selection manually.)

By the way I found that this trick does not work as well with a 20D, which fires fast and violently.
Cheers!
mbv

I reread your original post. You did say for static scenes. And I'd have to think that for static scenes, the largest file is very likely the sharpest. Sorry I didn't read the original a little closer! Besides, being a perl hacker myself, it's nice to see perl being put to good use.

-- Steve

Thanks for the additioanal data points for the Rebel and Nikons. I also had several Nikons with Best Shot Selector which supposedly used a similar approach to mine. Does anyone know how to load a Perl interpreter into a Canon DSLR :}?

At any rate hopefully this program will help save you fine people some time in your digital work flow. For me discovering a Perl plug in that could read EXIF data was worth the effort by itself. Opens up all kinds of possibilities for us Perl dabblers.

On the topic of macro shooting another trick I learned with hand held or monopod macro shooting is to set the auto focus to AI Servo or AI focus. This seems to help compensate for camera movement away from and towards the subject which is typically a big issue for macro shooting. Using the combination of this approach and burst shooting I find I am able to get sharp macro shots of stationary subjects at much lower shutter speeds with a monopod or hand held than the "inside the box" thinkers suggest is possible. This allows me to catch that insect sitting still for a second or so with a burst of shots and walk away with a shot not possible with the inside the box approach.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
Bill Thomson
'Relentlessly attempting to overcome a lack of talent'

Nikon prosumers have BSS, Best Shot Selector. If you have the option turned on you just hold down the shutter and the camera will take ten shots fairly quickly. The camera picks the photo with the largest size and automatically dumps the rest. I have a Nikon 5000 and it indeed works amazingly well!