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Focus Merge

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Jerry045

Jerry045

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Sitting at home and running out of things to amuse, I thought I would play with some focus merging.

My wife got a bouquet of Alstroemeria the other day. So I thought they might make for a good subject to play with focus merging, given they have more depth than my normal DOF.

So these were done with Affinity merging 12 shots.

357eb2ffe93b4248bd5e694cb9c9d7b8.jpg




3748013d84bf4b66a3f61947572aafdc.jpg




To get an idea of the normal DOF here are the normal shots.



e4e53a45bf144922947c31bdd43e91d9.jpg




768d8a680b744b218c071b78fd82fa93.jpg


C&C's always welcome.

--
Jerry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av8tor045
 

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Last edited:
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Same thing. Affinity calls it "merge", but basically you are combining a stack of photos keeping the sharpest parts.

It's a one button push function in Affinity. No need to make layers and masks and such.

--
Jerry
http://www.flickr.com/photos/av8tor045
 
Last edited:
As an Olympus user the terms used in their camera features are...
  • "Focus Stacking" where the camera automatically takes a bunch of shifted focus point images and merges them in camera. Usually about 8 images limit I think.
  • "Focus Bracketing" where the camera automatically takes a bunch of shifted focus point images and the users has to download the images and stack later in suitable software. That Bracketing feature is limited to 999 shots or stops when it hits infinity.
  • Some Olympus cameras have only Bracketing and some have both Bracketing and Stacking.
I must admit I do have an Olympus camera that does have the Focus Bracketing feature but sadly have not had time and patience to try and see how it works yet. I would use Affinity Photo to merge if I get that far.

Thus I'm ignorant about which Sony cameras or bodies may include the Stacking or the Bracketing feature or both.

In my bunch of Casio compact cameras they have always had a limited in-camera Stacking feature that sometimes works and sometimes leaves artifacts on the nearest object.
 
Jerry045 said:
Same thing. Affinity calls it "merge", but basically you are combining a stack of photos keeping the sharpest parts.

It's a one button push function in Affinity. No need to make layers and masks and such.
Click to expand...
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it. It did finally add the Intervalometer functionality, but not focus bracketing.

There's a very basic downloadable focus bracketing app, but that doesn't work on the latest cameras.
 
Digital Nigel said:
Jerry045 said:
Same thing. Affinity calls it "merge", but basically you are combining a stack of photos keeping the sharpest parts.

It's a one button push function in Affinity. No need to make layers and masks and such.
Click to expand...
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it. It did finally add the Intervalometer functionality, but not focus bracketing.

There's a very basic downloadable focus bracketing app, but that doesn't work on the latest cameras.
Click to expand...
I totally agree with you Nigel. That would be a great feature, especially for things like macro photography where you have such a narrow DOF.
 
Guy Parsons said:
... I'm ignorant about which Sony cameras or bodies may include the Stacking or the Bracketing feature or both.
Click to expand...
There's a PlayMemories camera app that can do focus bracketing, but it only produces three images - so I guess to get any value out of it you'd have to run more than one sequence with a different degree of focus shift each time.
 
Guy Parsons said:
As an Olympus user the terms used in their camera features are...
  • "Focus Stacking" where the camera automatically takes a bunch of shifted focus point images and merges them in camera. Usually about 8 images limit I think.
  • "Focus Bracketing" where the camera automatically takes a bunch of shifted focus point images and the users has to download the images and stack later in suitable software. That Bracketing feature is limited to 999 shots or stops when it hits infinity.
  • Some Olympus cameras have only Bracketing and some have both Bracketing and Stacking.
I must admit I do have an Olympus camera that does have the Focus Bracketing feature but sadly have not had time and patience to try and see how it works yet. I would use Affinity Photo to merge if I get that far.

Thus I'm ignorant about which Sony cameras or bodies may include the Stacking or the Bracketing feature or both.

In my bunch of Casio compact cameras they have always had a limited in-camera Stacking feature that sometimes works and sometimes leaves artifacts on the nearest object.
Click to expand...
Alas Guy, the Sony cameras lack any sort of focus bracketing. You have to do it the hard way.

I either use a slide bracket on my tripod or just move the tripod in small increments between snaps.

I like macro photography and as one gets cameras with larger sensors, the DOF gets smaller and smaller. Affinity makes it so easy to do focus merging.

One must be careful physically moving the camera as the perspective changes and you get ghosts.
 
sybersitizen said:
Guy Parsons said:
... I'm ignorant about which Sony cameras or bodies may include the Stacking or the Bracketing feature or both.
Click to expand...
There's a PlayMemories camera app that can do focus bracketing, but it only produces three images - so I guess to get any value out of it you'd have to run more than one sequence with a different degree of focus shift each time.
Click to expand...
I seem to recall that while PlayMemories worked with my RX10iii, Sony inconveniently removed that capability with the RX10iv. Bummer...
 
Digital Nigel said:
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? Many Sony cameras have had exposure bracketing, going back at least to 2010, and probably earlier. Which particular ones don't?
 
Just for historical reasons and also for the reason that all camera companies always keep an eye on what all of their competitors are doing, I dug in the Olympus updates to find that they did firmware changes to add to their E-M1 (Mk1) from 2013....
  • Focus Bracketing added in 2015
  • Focus Stacking added in 2016
See the huge list of changes and improvements made to that camera over the years at dl01.olympus-imaging.com/ww/ud2/ENU/0001/1090/index46a.html

I just wish Sony would be so active in adding features to their cameras.....

Simply add the RX100M7 and ZV-1 feature to the RX100M6 that delivers an ever incrementing file name and added text to the file name to video clips and I would be happy. Ending up with endless"C0001" clips from two M6 cameras in the house is rather annoying.

And then add focus bracketing of course. :-)
 
Last edited:
sybersitizen said:
Digital Nigel said:
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? Many Sony cameras have had exposure bracketing, going back at least to 2010, and probably earlier. Which particular ones don't?
Click to expand...
My suspicion is a typo.
 
sybersitizen said:
Digital Nigel said:
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? Many Sony cameras have had exposure bracketing, going back at least to 2010, and probably earlier. Which particular ones don't?
Click to expand...
Sorry, I meant to type focus bracketing. I'd like it to work like exposure bracketing, and typed the wrong word.
 
Guy Parsons said:
sybersitizen said:
Digital Nigel said:
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it.
Click to expand...
What do you mean? Many Sony cameras have had exposure bracketing, going back at least to 2010, and probably earlier. Which particular ones don't?
Click to expand...
My suspicion is a typo.
Click to expand...
Yes, you're right, my fault. I'd like it to work like exposure bracketing, with the choice of the size and number of steps. The size would be in terms of fractions of the DoF (eg, 0.3, 0.7).
 
Guy Parsons said:
Just for historical reasons and also for the reason that all camera companies always keep an eye on what all of their competitors are doing, I dug in the Olympus updates to find that they did firmware changes to add to their E-M1 (Mk1) from 2013....
  • Focus Bracketing added in 2015
  • Focus Stacking added in 2016
Click to expand...
Olympus introduced focus bracketing & stacking with the TG-3 in 2014. Combined with a good macro mode, it received lots of positive feedback. As you mentioned, those features eventually were added to the E-M1 with firmware updates. It's now a standard feature across the current OM-D series.

I dream up plenty of ideas where focus bracketing would be useful. But I'm usually not that good at following through with macro related projects. Now would be a good time to burn some hours playing around with a few of them.
Guy Parsons said:
I just wish Sony would be so active in adding features to their cameras.....
Click to expand...
Sony is reluctant to add such "superfluous" features. It wasn't until last year that something as basic as a intervalometer finally crossed some magical threshold. At least they did a decent implementation.
 
Jerry045 said:
So these were done with Affinity merging 12 shots.

To get an idea of the normal DOF here are the normal shots.

C&C's always welcome.
Click to expand...
Very nicely done. Is merging the same as stacking?
 
Digital Nigel said:
Jerry045 said:
Same thing. Affinity calls it "merge", but basically you are combining a stack of photos keeping the sharpest parts.

It's a one button push function in Affinity. No need to make layers and masks and such.
Click to expand...
I just wish Sony cameras included exposure bracketing. It would be an easy feature to add, needed no new physical controls or computational photography, but Sony stubbornly resists doing it. It did finally add the Intervalometer functionality, but not focus bracketing.

There's a very basic downloadable focus bracketing app, but that doesn't work on the latest cameras.
Click to expand...
It would be nice if all manufacturers enabled every feature we all want in one camera but it will never happen. I see you made a typing mistake in your first sentence because Sony Cameras do allow exposure bracketing.

--
Tom
 
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