Originally posted by lnorton
Thanks so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed response. I appreciate you sharing your approach. I hadn't thought of a laser distance meter. I'll dive into your suggestions and see how it works for me.
Laurence
You are very welcome, Laurence, I hope it works out for you. FYI, I use the Leica Disto D2 and it doesn't work for anything farther than 200ft. It also doesn't work when the ambient light is too bright or on a reflective surface. : )
Originally posted by chicagonature
Regarding Focus Stacking, do you have problems with ghosting or alignment? I shoot extremely detailed landscapes that feature prairies and millions of blades of grass and flowers.
Also, if you were to shoot using hyperfocal distance, couldn't you try something subtle like taking just 2 shots at, say, f8? Let's say that the nearest subject is 2 feet and we also want infinity.
- 1st Shot: At f/8 on the 25mm lens on the 645D, you would set the lens to the hyperfocal distance for f/8, which is almost exactly 8 feet. This shot would get everything sharp (for the most part) between 4 feet and infinity.
- 2nd Shot: At f/8, focus the lens at something like 3 feet (a foot beyond the nearest subject) and guarantee that everything between 2 feet and a good amount beyond 4 feet would be in focus.
(Of course, you could probably take the first shot and focus a little further out than 8 feet to better guarantee that infinity looks sharp. Possibly set focus to 10 feet.)
The reason I'm asking is because, in my situation, taking too many shots will not work because of the problem with the wind blowing around the grasses and flowers. Even small movements will not align and cause problems with the stacking.
Mike,
You are absolutly right about the alignment issues, when you have grasses or flowers that do not have fixed positions, they could be a problem. But then again, you still have that issue even for a single exposure shot, since during the golden hour we are dealing with an exposure at least a second long. So the best way to go about it is get the right timing and take mutiple shots as quickly as possible while things are not moving. Also try to carefully partition your shots so that you won't have moving objects near the seams. : )
About the DOF question, the depth of field is directly related to the circle of confusion you allow, and therefore a very subjective quantity. That's why you cannot simply go hyperfocal and believe everything from the half the hyperfocal distance to infinity is 'sharp'. As I mentioned above, take some shots with different focus settings and take a look at 100%, so that you know what kind of pixel sharpness you are talking about. Also the sharpness issues can occur from lens defects such as field curvature (which has been an issue for FA 35mm), so I encourage this kind of first-hand tests.
Originally posted by Fotojoh
Harklee,
Your images are stunning. I really love the Lake Tahoe Zephyr Cove shot. I've followed your posts for a few months now and thanks in part to your thoughtful reviews and beautiful images, I've taken the plunge and should get my 645D in a week or two. Thanks for your help.
Thanks for the kind words, Joe, I really appreciate the comment.
Originally posted by Zygonyx
Thanks for sharing Zygonyx, that's a lot of useful information!
Originally posted by tuco
I shot this on an inexpensive camera just to demo Helicon's Focus stacking software that has a 30 day free trial. The shot has about 8 focus points, IIRC.
Great sample, Tuco, I will try that myself too. Thanks for sharing. : )