Focus Stacking with the R5 (images and tips)

Neuropsychology · Jul 31, 2020

Wanted to test this out really quick. Pretty easy to focus stack with the R5! As far as compositing, I tried DPP tools from Canon, but Photoshop did a better job. DPP was quicker though but seemed to blur edges. I tried a combo of settings in DPP but 0,2,0 was consistently better. Ultimately, PS was the choice though. I'll post an image example but if others have techniques to share that's cool.

One thing I noticed was that if you are set up for focus stacking, your settings cannot be registered to C1 etc (custom shooting mode) due to focus bracketing being set to enable. I thought that odd.

Countdown (transformer). 70 images stacked

mikeyL · Jul 31, 2020

Very cool! Thanks for posting this, was wondering how the implementation in the R5 was going to fare for ease of use and end result. Looks like it gets a high grade on both counts!

ML

BlueRay2 · Jul 31, 2020

this is very well done, i can see the 3D effect, vividly! now you have talked me into getting a RRS focus stacking rail and experience how far i can take this ;-) enjoy your R5.

regards.

Neuropsychology · Aug 1, 2020

1Dx4me said:
this is very well done, i can see the 3D effect, vividly! now you have talked me into getting a RRS focus stacking rail and experience how far i can take this ;-) enjoy your R5.

regards.

Thanks! Have you seen any R5 specific rails?

BlueRay2 · Aug 1, 2020

Neuropsychology said:
1Dx4me said:

this is very well done, i can see the 3D effect, vividly! now you have talked me into getting a RRS focus stacking rail and experience how far i can take this ;-) enjoy your R5.

regards.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Have you seen any R5 specific rails?

not really, are there specific rails for R5?

Neuropsychology · Aug 2, 2020

1Dx4me said:
Neuropsychology said:

1Dx4me said:

this is very well done, i can see the 3D effect, vividly! now you have talked me into getting a RRS focus stacking rail and experience how far i can take this ;-) enjoy your R5.

regards.

Click to expand...

Thanks! Have you seen any R5 specific rails?

Click to expand...

not really, are there specific rails for R5?

Not yet but I'm not so familiar with rails

Neuropsychology · Aug 7, 2020

has anyone played around with this? I'd love to see pics and tips. Like, working with a flash...I wonder if that's possible?

A Sardinian Nomad · Aug 7, 2020

Does anyone know if it’s possible to make it work with the mechanical shutter?

I’ve tried this feature a couple of times but it only seems to work in Electronic Shutter mode, this is pretty bad considering that you loose quite a bit of dynamic range...

Neuropsychology · Aug 8, 2020

A Sardinian Nomad said:
Does anyone know if it’s possible to make it work with the mechanical shutter?

I’ve tried this feature a couple of times but it only seems to work in Electronic Shutter mode, this is pretty bad considering that you loose quite a bit of dynamic range...

Didn't think to try that yet. I shall!

Neuropsychology · Aug 8, 2020

As far as stacking, I've tested Photoshop, DPP4, and Helicon focus 7. By far, Helicon is faster and has better results. Anyone else try these yet?

Praefos · Aug 17, 2020

First of, I'm coming from a Canon M6 Mark II and have the pleasure to use a Canon R5 right now.

I used the Focus Stacking option of the M6 Mark II extensively, especially for long exposure night photography. I don't know about the exact dynamic range in this mode with the M6MKII, but it is a pleasure to use it. In order to use it this way, you need to switch your lens to manual focus. Without this hack of the Focus Stacking mode, it is really a pain to use the intervall timer, because you're losing time and sometimes some images. The images lose it due to the interval timer and it's inability to take another shoot right away.

Coming back to the Canon R5, it has the same Focus Stacking feature, but the Criple Hammer struck again. Instead of using the camera in Manual mode with all possible settings in regards of exposure, you can only use expose times between 0.5 and 1/8000 of a second. This doesn't make any sense.

Yesterday, we had a great thunderstorm during golden hour. I was able to get some nice lighting strikes with this feature, because I don't really have any noticable gaps between shoots.

During night time, I finally discovered the Canon R5 limitation. I wanted to do an exposure for about 5 to 15 seconds, but the camera wouldn't let me. Switching to the interval timer, give me a gap of 5-7 seconds between each shoot. Therefore, I missed a couple of lightning strikes, which might have been pretty impressive!

I would really like Canon to fix this issue!

Does anyone have a better solution for this? I'm sorry for maybe hijacking this thread.

GetUp · Aug 17, 2020

Is it any way to use stacking with external flash?

Sittatunga · Aug 17, 2020

Praefos said:
First of, I'm coming from a Canon M6 Mark II and have the pleasure to use a Canon R5 right now.

I used the Focus Stacking option of the M6 Mark II extensively, especially for long exposure night photography. I don't know about the exact dynamic range in this mode with the M6MKII, but it is a pleasure to use it. In order to use it this way, you need to switch your lens to manual focus. Without this hack of the Focus Stacking mode, it is really a pain to use the intervall timer, because you're losing time and sometimes some images. The images lose it due to the interval timer and it's inability to take another shoot right away.

Coming back to the Canon R5, it has the same Focus Stacking feature, but the Criple Hammer struck again. Instead of using the camera in Manual mode with all possible settings in regards of exposure, you can only use expose times between 0.5 and 1/8000 of a second. This doesn't make any sense.

Yesterday, we had a great thunderstorm during golden hour. I was able to get some nice lighting strikes with this feature, because I don't really have any noticable gaps between shoots.

During night time, I finally discovered the Canon R5 limitation. I wanted to do an exposure for about 5 to 15 seconds, but the camera wouldn't let me. Switching to the interval timer, give me a gap of 5-7 seconds between each shoot. Therefore, I missed a couple of lightning strikes, which might have been pretty impressive!

I would really like Canon to fix this issue!

Does anyone have a better solution for this? I'm sorry for maybe hijacking this thread.

Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

Praefos · Aug 17, 2020

Sittatunga said:
Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

As far as I know, I disable it by default. But maybe I missed it. Can you select higher exposure times?

Sittatunga · Aug 17, 2020

Praefos said:
Sittatunga said:

Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, I disable it by default. But maybe I missed it. Can you select higher exposure times?

I don't have an R5, but that, or image review, are my first suspects for more than a second's delay between shots.

Praefos · Aug 17, 2020

Sittatunga said:
Praefos said:

Sittatunga said:

Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, I disable it by default. But maybe I missed it. Can you select higher exposure times?

Click to expand...

I don't have an R5, but that, or image review, are my first suspects for more than a second's delay between shots.

Image review is disabled.

Just to clarify:

When I'm using Focus Bracketing (MF/AF shouldn't matter), I can only choose an exposure time (duration) of 1/8000 to 1/2 second.

When I'm using the Interval Timer, the camera will not record another image straight away. It might even skip images, which I observed in the Canon M6 Mark II. I didn't try to verify this, but with an exposure setting of 15 sec and an interval timer of 16 sec, the next recorded image started something like 5-10 sec later.

One big feature, which I'm missing with the Interval Timer, you don't have a nice image review, where you can see your image while the next image is being shoot.

Praefos · Aug 17, 2020

Praefos said:
Sittatunga said:

Praefos said:

Sittatunga said:

Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, I disable it by default. But maybe I missed it. Can you select higher exposure times?

Click to expand...

I don't have an R5, but that, or image review, are my first suspects for more than a second's delay between shots.

Click to expand...

Image review is disabled.

Just to clarify:

When I'm using Focus Bracketing (MF/AF shouldn't matter), I can only choose an exposure time (duration) of 1/8000 to 1/2 second.

When I'm using the Interval Timer, the camera will not record another image straight away. It might even skip images, which I observed in the Canon M6 Mark II. I didn't try to verify this, but with an exposure setting of 15 sec and an interval timer of 16 sec, the next recorded image started something like 5-10 sec later.

One big feature, which I'm missing with the Interval Timer, you don't have a nice image review, where you can see your image while the next image is being shoot.

Just verified my settings. Long exposure noise reduction and high ISO noise reduction will not affect this setting. It stays at 1/2 seconds as a maximum exposure.

A Sardinian Nomad · Aug 17, 2020

Praefos said:
Praefos said:

Sittatunga said:

Praefos said:

Sittatunga said:

Did you have Long Exposure Noise Reduction enabled?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, I disable it by default. But maybe I missed it. Can you select higher exposure times?

Click to expand...

I don't have an R5, but that, or image review, are my first suspects for more than a second's delay between shots.

Click to expand...

Image review is disabled.

Just to clarify:

When I'm using Focus Bracketing (MF/AF shouldn't matter), I can only choose an exposure time (duration) of 1/8000 to 1/2 second.

When I'm using the Interval Timer, the camera will not record another image straight away. It might even skip images, which I observed in the Canon M6 Mark II. I didn't try to verify this, but with an exposure setting of 15 sec and an interval timer of 16 sec, the next recorded image started something like 5-10 sec later.

One big feature, which I'm missing with the Interval Timer, you don't have a nice image review, where you can see your image while the next image is being shoot.

Click to expand...

Just verified my settings. Long exposure noise reduction and high ISO noise reduction will not affect this setting. It stays at 1/2 seconds as a maximum exposure.

The R5 does the focus stacking using the electronic shutter which has a maximum exposure of 1/2 second, that’s why!

But definitely you are doing something wrong with the intervalometer, disable the noise reduction, long exposure noise reduction and set the intervalometer with an interval of 1sec!

Praefos · Aug 17, 2020

A Sardinian Nomad said:
The R5 does the focus stacking using the electronic shutter which has a maximum exposure of 1/2 second, that’s why!

I'm just seeing it right now :-O

Ok, the cripple hammer is for sure at work here!

Sittatunga · Aug 18, 2020

Praefos said:
A Sardinian Nomad said:

The R5 does the focus stacking using the electronic shutter which has a maximum exposure of 1/2 second, that’s why!

Click to expand...

I'm just seeing it right now :-O

Ok, the cripple hammer is for sure at work here!

That's a lazy, annoying term of abuse used by the hard of thinking to describe a design compromise they don't understand or like. Seriously, the only people who actually use a real cripple hammer are terrorists. They have no part in the engineering process. On the other hand, it can be a useful marker phrase to determine whether a post here is worth reading.

Focus Stacking with the R5 (images and tips)

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