R5 focus bracketing - did I miss something?

Is focus bracketing only available in electronic shutter? I did not find anything about that in the manual, but the camera switches to electronic shutter automatically... I just wonder why - I would prefer to do focus bracketing with mechanical or 1st curtain because of the higher dynamic range, but it wouldn't be that much of a deal if the electronic shutter was not restricted to 0.5 sec.

Strange restrictions...

Hopefully I just missed something to enable focus bracketing with electronic 1st curtain or mechanical shutter...

Thanks in advance!

I had wondered the same thing and felt I wanted a different choice than only ES.  Maybe some future firmware update will enable that.

But I finally concluded that:

- electronic shutter enables hand held focus bracketing especially with the great R5 stabilization. This is a great advantage vs requiring a tripod.

- stacking multiple exposures reduces noise and improves dynamic range as noticed by astrophotographers. So this offsets most if not all DR lost on any individual frame. But it requires at least 10 frames - more is better. If there are only 2-4 frames to stack then there is not much DR improvement.,

tomarse wrote

Do you maybe know a way to suggest improvements for future firmware updates to Canon? I have a few things on my mind - including this issue.

Not sure how best to make suggestions directly to Canon.  Maybe here in their site forums.

https://community.usa.canon.com/t5/Software/bd-p/software

poppyjk wrote:

I had wondered the same thing and felt I wanted a different choice than only ES. Maybe some future firmware update will enable that.

But I finally concluded that:

- electronic shutter enables hand held focus bracketing especially with the great R5 stabilization. This is a great advantage vs requiring a tripod.

- stacking multiple exposures reduces noise and improves dynamic range as noticed by astrophotographers. So this offsets most if not all DR lost on any individual frame. But it requires at least 10 frames - more is better. If there are only 2-4 frames to stack then there is not much DR improvement.,

I'm interested to know how focus stacking can increase DR when, hopefully, the exposure stays the same for all shots with only the focus changing. It makes no sense to me unless the camera switches to spot metering, which could be disastrous in some instances.

stevvi wrote:

poppyjk wrote:

I had wondered the same thing and felt I wanted a different choice than only ES. Maybe some future firmware update will enable that.

But I finally concluded that:

- electronic shutter enables hand held focus bracketing especially with the great R5 stabilization. This is a great advantage vs requiring a tripod.

- stacking multiple exposures reduces noise and improves dynamic range as noticed by astrophotographers. So this offsets most if not all DR lost on any individual frame. But it requires at least 10 frames - more is better. If there are only 2-4 frames to stack then there is not much DR improvement.,

I'm interested to know how focus stacking can increase DR when, hopefully, the exposure stays the same for all shots with only the focus changing. It makes no sense to me unless the camera switches to spot metering, which could be disastrous in some instances.

I admit that applying an astrophotography analysis to daylight photos may be totally inappropriate.  I am no expert and so may be spreading falsehood. Anyhow, here is a discussion relative to astrophotography, noise and dynamic range.

http://dslr-astrophotography.com/benefits-adding-frames-stack/#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20conclusion%20is,in%20terms%20of%20Dynamic%20range.&text=The%20noise%20cancellation%20has%20a,a%20minimum%20in%20your%20stack.

poppyjk wrote:

stevvi wrote:

poppyjk wrote:

I had wondered the same thing and felt I wanted a different choice than only ES. Maybe some future firmware update will enable that.

But I finally concluded that:

- electronic shutter enables hand held focus bracketing especially with the great R5 stabilization. This is a great advantage vs requiring a tripod.

- stacking multiple exposures reduces noise and improves dynamic range as noticed by astrophotographers. So this offsets most if not all DR lost on any individual frame. But it requires at least 10 frames - more is better. If there are only 2-4 frames to stack then there is not much DR improvement.,

I'm interested to know how focus stacking can increase DR when, hopefully, the exposure stays the same for all shots with only the focus changing. It makes no sense to me unless the camera switches to spot metering, which could be disastrous in some instances.

I admit that applying an astrophotography analysis to daylight photos may be totally inappropriate. I am no expert and so may be spreading falsehood. Anyhow, here is a discussion relative to astrophotography, noise and dynamic range.

http://dslr-astrophotography.com/benefits-adding-frames-stack/#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20conclusion%20is,in%20terms%20of%20Dynamic%20range.&text=The%20noise%20cancellation%20has%20a,a%20minimum%20in%20your%20stack.

Aaah... thank you. That isn't *focus* stacking, which only chooses the in-focus parts of each layer in the stack, ignoring the rest. Exposure bracketing/stacking is a different matter.

stevvi wrote:

poppyjk wrote:

I admit that applying an astrophotography analysis to daylight photos may be totally inappropriate. I am no expert and so may be spreading falsehood. Anyhow, here is a discussion relative to astrophotography, noise and dynamic range.

http://dslr-astrophotography.com/benefits-adding-frames-stack/#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20conclusion%20is,in%20terms%20of%20Dynamic%20range.&text=The%20noise%20cancellation%20has%20a,a%20minimum%20in%20your%20stack.

Aaah... thank you. That isn't *focus* stacking, which only chooses the in-focus parts of each layer in the stack, ignoring the rest. Exposure bracketing/stacking is a different matter.

In regards to this function (focus stacking), it (image stacking) seems to be a different matter, but actual you can use this function for DR/Noise stacking.

When you switch to Manual Focus, this function will give you multiple images without changing focus. I used this function in the Canon M6 Mark II all the time for serveral day and night time shoots. To my big surprise, they caped this function.

The reduced Dynamic Range could be the result of 20 fps. In order to reduce the amount of processing power and through put, they limit the DR. I think, I saw DR graph somewhere. The graph shows a decrease in DR.

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%20R5,Canon%20EOS%20R5(ES),Canon%20EOS%20R5(HS)

(Does anybody know, what HS stands for? High Speed?)

Using the interval timer is no option at all:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4513288

I think the best course of action would be to use their forum as well as writing to Canons Priority Support.

I would suggest an additional option for choosing Electronic Shutter for high speed and for high quality withing the focus stacking option.

Praefos wrote:

stevvi wrote:

poppyjk wrote:

I admit that applying an astrophotography analysis to daylight photos may be totally inappropriate. I am no expert and so may be spreading falsehood. Anyhow, here is a discussion relative to astrophotography, noise and dynamic range.

http://dslr-astrophotography.com/benefits-adding-frames-stack/#:~:text=The%20most%20important%20conclusion%20is,in%20terms%20of%20Dynamic%20range.&text=The%20noise%20cancellation%20has%20a,a%20minimum%20in%20your%20stack.

Aaah... thank you. That isn't *focus* stacking, which only chooses the in-focus parts of each layer in the stack, ignoring the rest. Exposure bracketing/stacking is a different matter.

In regards to this function (focus stacking), it (image stacking) seems to be a different matter, but actual you can use this function for DR/Noise stacking.

When you switch to Manual Focus, this function will give you multiple images without changing focus. I used this function in the Canon M6 Mark II all the time for serveral day and night time shoots. To my big surprise, they caped this function.

The reduced Dynamic Range could be the result of 20 fps. In order to reduce the amount of processing power and through put, they limit the DR. I think, I saw DR graph somewhere. The graph shows a decrease in DR.

https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon%20EOS%20R5,Canon%20EOS%20R5(ES),Canon%20EOS%20R5(HS)

(Does anybody know, what HS stands for? High Speed?)

Using the interval timer is no option at all:

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4513288

I think the best course of action would be to use their forum as well as writing to Canons Priority Support.

I would suggest an additional option for choosing Electronic Shutter for high speed and for high quality withing the focus stacking option.

Interesting... but I still don't understand how taking multiple shots of the same scene with the same camera settings can help with DR and noise as you're stacking what is basically the same photograph.

Yes, the R5 goes to 12bit for electronic shutter (and thus 20fps) and 13bit for for H+ (High Speed).

stevvi wrote:

Interesting... but I still don't understand how taking multiple shots of the same scene with the same camera settings can help with DR and noise as you're stacking what is basically the same photograph.

Yes, the R5 goes to 12bit for electronic shutter (and thus 20fps) and 13bit for for H+ (High Speed).

Just imagine to observe one pixel. Especially, when its dark will, you'll see obvious grain surrounding it. Now imagine, you take instead of an photo a movie clip. While you're observing this pixel it will change it's intensity, even though nothing changed in the scene. It most likely changes around a certain value it. If you plot those intensities along an x axis - representing time - and on a y axis - representing time- , you'll probably make out  a certain straight line. The more values you have, the clear your observation will be.

Now a certain method with image stacking is, to stack images using a median method. This means, you'll sort every value along the x axis starting with the lowest value. After finishing, you select the value in the middle. This value should in theory represent your closes guess in regards to the actual value.

Here is an example:

My dad accidentally hit the record button and recorded a moon as a clip. This is a screenshot.

I extracted several video frames and stacked them. This is the result.

And this it the result after applying some highlight recovery.

Here another example zoomed in. I took several shoots of this scene without touching the tripod or changing to much.

After Stacking several images, I got this result.

By image stacking you're reducing the image noise significantly. This gives you so much wiggle room to push your image very far!

I don't think its limited to E-Shutter, but I do remember there might have been a bug that was VERY odd as in... "how did you let this out the door". I'll keep looking, but I want to say it was limited to needing to disable a very common feature you would likely use with it. I believe there is another thread opened almost right after they were in people hands. But I've never tried it myself.

If you need a quick tutorial on it I believe Canon USA has a video as well as this article from The Digital Picture, https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Canon-Cameras/Canon-Focus-Bracketing.aspx

Praefos wrote:

stevvi wrote:

Interesting... but I still don't understand how taking multiple shots of the same scene with the same camera settings can help with DR and noise as you're stacking what is basically the same photograph.

Yes, the R5 goes to 12bit for electronic shutter (and thus 20fps) and 13bit for for H+ (High Speed).

Just imagine to observe one pixel. Especially, when its dark will, you'll see obvious grain surrounding it. Now imagine, you take instead of an photo a movie clip. While you're observing this pixel it will change it's intensity, even though nothing changed in the scene. It most likely changes around a certain value it. If you plot those intensities along an x axis - representing time - and on a y axis - representing time- , you'll probably make out a certain straight line. The more values you have, the clear your observation will be.

Now a certain method with image stacking is, to stack images using a median method. This means, you'll sort every value along the x axis starting with the lowest value. After finishing, you select the value in the middle. This value should in theory represent your closes guess in regards to the actual value.

Here is an example:

My dad accidentally hit the record button and recorded a moon as a clip. This is a screenshot.

I extracted several video frames and stacked them. This is the result.

And this it the result after applying some highlight recovery.

Here another example zoomed in. I took several shoots of this scene without touching the tripod or changing to much.

After Stacking several images, I got this result.

By image stacking you're reducing the image noise significantly. This gives you so much wiggle room to push your image very far!

That makes perfect sense. Great examples. Thank you.

tomarse wrote:

Is focus bracketing only available in electronic shutter?

Yes, only in electronic shutter. This means no flash. It is the same with all Canon cameras offering focus bracketing.

If you want focus bracketing with mechanical shutter you need some external hardware like Helicon Tube or a stacking rail system.

Steve Balcombe wrote:

This is a great example of the technique, thanks for posting. However in view of the topic - and the subject line which is still being used - I'll say once again that this /does not/ apply to focus stacking.

If you could repreat the stacking, it would be applied....

1. First problem is to nail focus always the same way at the beginning and throughout the focus bracketing process (AF enabled).
2. Second problem, you should get software and script to stack all those images, because this process is crazy slow doing it by hand for every frame (same focus).

Here is only additional idea, which could be applied. This technique has the assumtion that there is no focus breathing present within the lens:

• Have a wide depth of field (high and still acceptable f-stop) and
• have every fine increments setup within the camera.
• Do the Focus Bracketing and
• even focus a little bit further. Stop refocus with focus-stop.
• Now having all images imported, the algorithem would filter out / mask out every area with unaccable focus.
• Now you could acctually stack the result, because several areas should overlap.

There might be some problems:

1. not every area has the same number of images used for image stacking.
2. Out of focus area will need to be addressed seperately.

Problem: Every lens has focus breathing and therefore an alignment algorithem has to be applied!

One way aroud use intervall triggering then you get flash triggered > Joystivk to change af point > Also note deöay time 10 sec to get time for flash up between shots