A few shots using focus bracketing on the R5 + RF 100-500

The R5 + RF 100-500 + RF 1.4x is fast becoming a favorite combination of mine when shooting close-up subjects. Add in the built-in focus bracketing and it just gets better. Being able to do this hand-held was something I just never would have expected, and I'm very happy with the results.

We have a pretty large indoor butterfly conservatory outside of Phoenix AZ, so it allows for a lot of opportunities to get some close-up shots. The butterflies are no less skittish, so you need to be fast and the subject needs to hold still (they don't listen well). It doesn't always work out, but it's a fun challenge.

Adding in the 1.4x, while not always necessary, is nice to get a bit extra reach and most of these are barely cropped. I usually have the focus bracketing set to take 20 shots, which is more then enough, but it helps get the subject and some of the leaf or branch in focus as well. I don't always need all 20 shots, so most of these are around 10-12 that were merged in Helicon Focus and edited in Lightroom.

1/160th, f/10, 700mm ISO 1250

1/125th, f/9, 599mm ISO 320

1/125th, f/8, 420mm ISO 320

1/125th, f/9, 631mm, ISO 640

1/125th, f/8, 420mm, ISO 640

1/80, f/10, 700mm, ISO 250

1/160th, f/9, 480mm, ISO 1000

1/160th, f/8, 508mm, ISO 800

1/160th, f/10, 700mm, ISO 250

Wow!  Great shots, and hand-held, amazing.

I have the R5/100-500 myself but never thought of doing macro shots this way. Will need to give it a try

Really nice shots!

Since I've got no RF1,4x (yet), I did some tests with the D500 (D=77mm) accessory lens. With 500 zoom a focus distance 820/660 mm and a free working distance of 480/320 mm are obtained.

Of course too short for butterflies and other small animals but might be helpful for flowers - no loss of speed, cheaper, very small and will fit on the 70-200 too. Don't no yet how much image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless I'm still trying to get the RF1.4x ...

maver wrote:

Wow! Great shots, and hand-held, amazing.

I have the R5/100-500 myself but never thought of doing macro shots this way. Will need to give it a try

Thanks!  The IS+IBIS really seems to work very well, even at 700mm hand-held.  On occasion I'll see some jumping around, but it's usually because I'm not keeping as still as I need to.

Phylloxera wrote:

Really nice shots!

Since I've got no RF1,4x (yet), I did some tests with the D500 (D=77mm) accessory lens. With 500 zoom a focus distance 820/660 mm and a free working distance of 480/320 mm are obtained.

Of course too short for butterflies and other small animals but might be helpful for flowers - no loss of speed, cheaper, very small and will fit on the 70-200 too. Don't no yet how much image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless I'm still trying to get the RF1.4x ...

Thanks!
I have the D500 as well, and I've tried it and compared it against the 1.4x converter, and the D500 just didn't do a great job.  It may be something with the camera and communication that it "knows" the extender is on the lens, whereas the D500 is just an add-on "filter" on the end.
In the end, if I wanted to get very close, I would use the RF 100mm Macro lens (which I do on occasion for these kinds of shots), but the 100-500 + 1.4x really seems to be the sweet-spot for me.

JayLT4 wrote:

Phylloxera wrote:

Really nice shots!

Since I've got no RF1,4x (yet), I did some tests with the D500 (D=77mm) accessory lens. With 500 zoom a focus distance 820/660 mm and a free working distance of 480/320 mm are obtained.

Of course too short for butterflies and other small animals but might be helpful for flowers - no loss of speed, cheaper, very small and will fit on the 70-200 too. Don't no yet how much image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless I'm still trying to get the RF1.4x ...

Thanks!
I have the D500 as well, and I've tried it and compared it against the 1.4x converter, and the D500 just didn't do a great job. It may be something with the camera and communication that it "knows" the extender is on the lens, whereas the D500 is just an add-on "filter" on the end.
In the end, if I wanted to get very close, I would use the RF 100mm Macro lens (which I do on occasion for these kinds of shots), but the 100-500 + 1.4x really seems to be the sweet-spot for me.

Does the Focus Bracketing combine shots in camera like HDR?  I am planning to use this setup on a RF 100 mm macro lens to improve focusing depth of field

Colin Smith1 wrote:

JayLT4 wrote:

Phylloxera wrote:

Really nice shots!

Since I've got no RF1,4x (yet), I did some tests with the D500 (D=77mm) accessory lens. With 500 zoom a focus distance 820/660 mm and a free working distance of 480/320 mm are obtained.

Of course too short for butterflies and other small animals but might be helpful for flowers - no loss of speed, cheaper, very small and will fit on the 70-200 too. Don't no yet how much image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless I'm still trying to get the RF1.4x ...

Thanks!
I have the D500 as well, and I've tried it and compared it against the 1.4x converter, and the D500 just didn't do a great job. It may be something with the camera and communication that it "knows" the extender is on the lens, whereas the D500 is just an add-on "filter" on the end.
In the end, if I wanted to get very close, I would use the RF 100mm Macro lens (which I do on occasion for these kinds of shots), but the 100-500 + 1.4x really seems to be the sweet-spot for me.

Does the Focus Bracketing combine shots in camera like HDR? I am planning to use this setup on a RF 100 mm macro lens to improve focusing depth of field

No, you need to merge the photos using software after you take them.  Normally I use Helicon Focus as it works very well, fast and returns DNG files back to Lightroom.  You can also use Photoshop, and it'll also do a good job but it can be quite a bit slower

BlueRay2 wrote:

these are super awesome butterflies macro shot that i have seen so far. the iq of RF 100-500 is very convincing

Thanks!  I'm still constantly impressed with the level of detail this lens can provide, especially when a converter is also added

JayLT4 wrote:

Being able to do this hand-held was something I just never would have expected

merged in Helicon Focus

The results are excellent.  I sometimes do similar with the EF 100-400mmL II + EF 2x III on my EOS R6.  But I was surprised you had any luck using Helicon Focus with handheld images because this application/program absolutely refuses to work with image stacks where any of the subject is misaligned by more than a few pixels.  You'd think it would be capable of shifting the layers as needed.   I first assumed you used a tripod to snap your shots but then I saw that you mentioned these were handheld shots.

Just bought the RF 100-500 and saw your beautifull images in this post... This is awesome!

Hope I can try figure this out myself!

JayLT4 wrote:

Colin Smith1 wrote:

JayLT4 wrote:

Phylloxera wrote:

Really nice shots!

Since I've got no RF1,4x (yet), I did some tests with the D500 (D=77mm) accessory lens. With 500 zoom a focus distance 820/660 mm and a free working distance of 480/320 mm are obtained.

Of course too short for butterflies and other small animals but might be helpful for flowers - no loss of speed, cheaper, very small and will fit on the 70-200 too. Don't no yet how much image quality will suffer.

Nevertheless I'm still trying to get the RF1.4x ...

Thanks!
I have the D500 as well, and I've tried it and compared it against the 1.4x converter, and the D500 just didn't do a great job. It may be something with the camera and communication that it "knows" the extender is on the lens, whereas the D500 is just an add-on "filter" on the end.
In the end, if I wanted to get very close, I would use the RF 100mm Macro lens (which I do on occasion for these kinds of shots), but the 100-500 + 1.4x really seems to be the sweet-spot for me.

Does the Focus Bracketing combine shots in camera like HDR? I am planning to use this setup on a RF 100 mm macro lens to improve focusing depth of field

No, you need to merge the photos using software after you take them. Normally I use Helicon Focus as it works very well, fast and returns DNG files back to Lightroom. You can also use Photoshop, and it'll also do a good job but it can be quite a bit slower

You can also use dpp (they call it depth composting), it’s slower than helicon but similar and free

I didn't see those photos 10 months ago but glad I did today.  Beautiful work and thank-you for posting.

Bramble9

The Zentone wrote:

Can you explain more about your process in taking these shots? You talk about 20 shots in a short period of time till the butterfly goes away.

Correct, with Focus Bracketing the whole point is to get as many shots as needed with different focus points moving through the subject.  This allows you to take multiple pictures, each with a fairly narrow depth-of-field, and combine them into an image with a larger depth-of-field.  For still subjects you can take as much time as you want, and as many pictures as you want.  For subjects like butterflies, well, you can only take as many pictures as they'll let you.  Anything from a breeze moving them or the leaf, to another butterfly dive-bombing them can basically interrupt the whole process or "ruin" the entire stack of images as the subject needs to remain as still as possible.  The nice thing about the R5 (and R7 which I also use for this) is that they take between 20-30 shots per second so you usually don't need too much time to get the shots.  It usually takes me longer to line everything up and compose the shot as it does to take them all.

When I do this I set my focus to One Shot focus with a single focus point.  I focus on the main part of the subject I want (usually the head/eye), lock focus and then move the camera back slightly until the initial point I want in focus like a leaf or leg looks good, hold still and hit the shutter button.  The camera will take the 20+ shots.  If I can take a couple more I will because it only takes one or two shots from the stack to mess up the whole merge.

It's not easy, and it is time consuming, but with the right shot it can really make a difference.  It doesn't always work well and you need to understand what kind of shots do well with stacking, and ones that don't, but if you try it out enough you'll see what those are.