R7 focus stacking in camera

I tried out the R7 in-camera focus stacking, and am very happy with the result. I should say, of course, that I am interested in how my images look to normal people at normal display sizes and normal viewing distances. I'm sure there will be some (one or two at least), who would look at these results and immediately moan about all kinds of objectionable artefacts. This post is not for them. A recent post on this forum served the useful function of bringing two such people to each other's attention. It's nice that they found each other, and they can happily decry to each other the terrible results that other people are actually quite happy with. What I am amazed about with this feature on the R7 is just how easy it is to use, and produce results that I like (as does everyone else who has seen them so far, most of whom are not obsessive pixel peepers). My previous forays into focus stacking were done with the focus bracketing on my M6II on a tripod. I then loaded the files (anywhere from 15 to 30 of them) into Lightroom, and sent them to open as layers in Photoshop. In PS I performed two separate operations on the layers (first aligning, then merging), flattened the layers, and saved the resulting image. With this image from my R7 I set the camera to take 25 images, handheld. It took under a second to take all 25 images, and then around 20 seconds to produce the stacked JPEG. I cropped it a bit, and enhanced a bit in Lightroom. Here's a web-sized version:

As far as I know, the R7 is the first Canon camera to perform the whole stacking procedure in camera (though you can do it manually if you want--the camera also saves all the RAW files). To me, it's like magic.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

I tried out the R7 in-camera focus stacking, and am very happy with the result. I should say, of course, that I am interested in how my images look to normal people at normal display sizes and normal viewing distances. I'm sure there will be some (one or two at least), who would look at these results and immediately moan about all kinds of objectionable artefacts. This post is not for them. A recent post on this forum served the useful function of bringing two such people to each other's attention. It's nice that they found each other, and they can happily decry to each other the terrible results that other people are actually quite happy with. What I am amazed about with this feature on the R7 is just how easy it is to use, and produce results that I like (as does everyone else who has seen them so far, most of whom are not obsessive pixel peepers). My previous forays into focus stacking were done with the focus bracketing on my M6II on a tripod. I then loaded the files (anywhere from 15 to 30 of them) into Lightroom, and sent them to open as layers in Photoshop. In PS I performed two separate operations on the layers (first aligning, then merging), flattened the layers, and saved the resulting image. With this image from my R7 I set the camera to take 25 images, handheld. It took under a second to take all 25 images, and then around 20 seconds to produce the stacked JPEG. I cropped it a bit, and enhanced a bit in Lightroom. Here's a web-sized version:

As far as I know, the R7 is the first Canon camera to perform the whole stacking procedure in camera (though you can do it manually if you want--the camera also saves all the RAW files). To me, it's like magic.

Great stuff - would be interesting to see how it compares to DPP which seems the only option in the R10 and R5 or with Helicon Soft etc...for those with paid software.

Images where part of the object sits a bit in front of something behind it is my challenge at times - even in a simple flower or insect shot like the below which is ~ 12 images - Helicon with some tweaking.   DPP seems not bad but in camera great for speed if it works well!

Looks great to me.  In camera focus stacking is one of the reasons I pre-ordered the R7.  Sure wish it would get here someday soon.

Just so I understand this; does the R7 produce the focus stacked result in the camera too?

I've tried this with my R3, but then I got a bunch of images to run in DPP, to create the focus stacked result. The result was good without any fiddling with any of the base images.

Stacked image.

A single image to compare with.

Hello - the latest firmware enables the R3 to produce the final image in camera from the series of focus bracketed shots - as per the R7 and R10

The full details are in the Focus Bracketing menu

Cheers

John

apersson850 wrote:

Just so I understand this; does the R7 produce the focus stacked result in the camera too? [...]

It does, if you instruct it to. When 'depth compositing' is enabled, the camera will save the individual pictures (which can be RAW) and generate a JPEG composite. So you can still bring the individual pictures into DPP4/Helicon Focus/Zerene/Photoshop to get higher quality result, but the JPEG is a fast way to see if you need to redo the stack.

DrJohnEvs wrote:

The full details are in the Focus Bracketing menu

Thank you.
You know, I use my camera set to Swedish, not because I don't understand English, but just because you can. But the Swedish translation of Depth compositeis so far fetched that I didn't realize what it meant.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

I tried out the R7 in-camera focus stacking, and am very happy with the result.

Thanks for posting this report. I have used focus bracketing on the R5 a lot to make sure I get at least one perfectly focused image. But I have never had the motivation to try focus stacking multiple images in post. Now that I know it works in camera on the R7, I will give it a try.

I do a lot of focus bracketed work. The biggest problem you all will have depending on your lens is focus breathing. As the focus distance changes, some lens tend to appear to zoom (including primes). Also as the focal point moves further away nearby objects such as tree branches etc. bloom and tend to cover areas you don't want them too. Using Helicon Focus to process the RAW images one can do some correction of this blooming. With the in camera processing I doubt the camera's firmware can make those kind of adjustments.

This is an focus stacked image shot bracketed with Canon R5, Canon 70-200mm lens at 200mm, f/11, 1/125th sec. exposure, ISO 400. It is made up of 878 Focus Bracketed images processed to yield 114 individual Focus Stacked images, 6 rows x 19 columns 30% overlap in portrait orientation.

The original image is: 2.278 Gaga-pixels, 32,282 x 70,569 pixels, 107" x 235" 300 PPI https://abbascreationsphotography.com/GC_Moonrise.htm

The R10 also does automatic focus stacking in the camera. There is no need to stack photos in DPP4. The results are remarkable.

john80504 wrote:

I do a lot of focus bracketed work. The biggest problem you all will have depending on your lens is focus breathing. As the focus distance changes, some lens tend to appear to zoom (including primes). Also as the focal point moves further away nearby objects such as tree branches etc. bloom and tend to cover areas you don't want them too. Using Helicon Focus to process the RAW images one can do some correction of this blooming. With the in camera processing I doubt the camera's firmware can make those kind of adjustments.

This is an focus stacked image shot bracketed with Canon R5, Canon 70-200mm lens at 200mm, f/11, 1/125th sec. exposure, ISO 400. It is made up of 878 Focus Bracketed images processed to yield 114 individual Focus Stacked images, 6 rows x 19 columns 30% overlap in portrait orientation.

The original image is: 2.278 Gaga-pixels, 32,282 x 70,569 pixels, 107" x 235" 300 PPI https://abbascreationsphotography.com/GC_Moonrise.htm

The sort of image in the OP will not have much effect of focus breathing, as it is over a relatively (in this case very) short distance, and at a very long focal length (in this case 1600mm effective focal length). But yes it can be a problem in landscape photography with near and far objects. I don’t know whether the in-camera compositing routine in the R7 specifically corrects for this, but all the results I’ve seen from the R7 here and elsewhere, and from Olympus cameras, are so well aligned it seems likely that they do. My own experience is mostly with the R5 for macro, merging in DPP.  For landscape I bracket manually, and merge the images in Affinity, which does a much better job than Photoshop/Lightroom. But it looks much easier to do this in-camera, and as the RAWs are all saved, you can always re-do it on your computer.

Ephemeris wrote:

May I ask what is a Gaga-pixel? Is it a typo or something I should understand?

A gigapixel (Giga-pixel is a spell checkers modification) image is an image made up of a minimum of 1 billion pixels. For example if an image is 10,000 x 100,000 pixels it is 1 gigapixel in size.  Virtually all gigapixel images are created by stitching numerous images together.

Ephemeris wrote:

john80504 wrote:

Ephemeris wrote:

May I ask what is a Gaga-pixel? Is it a typo or something I should understand?

A gigapixel (Giga-pixel is a spell checkers modification) image is an image made up of a minimum of 1 billion pixels. For example if an image is 10,000 x 100,000 pixels it is 1 gigapixel in size. Virtually all gigapixel images are created by stitching numerous images together.

So a typo?

LOL, yes, now I see that it is misspelled.

john80504 wrote:

Ephemeris wrote:

May I ask what is a Gaga-pixel? Is it a typo or something I should understand?

A gigapixel (Giga-pixel is a spell checkers modification) image is an image made up of a minimum of 1 billion pixels. For example if an image is 10,000 x 100,000 pixels it is 1 gigapixel in size. Virtually all gigapixel images are created by stitching numerous images together.

Oh, so a thousand Million Reasons pixels, then?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPiWHR16rHI&t