Thread: Hand Held in camera focus stack - flower

Looks really good, but some questions.

What is a hand held focus stack?

Is it a modern version of extension rings?

Mick.

Originally Posted by Optimark

Looks really good, but some questions.

What is a hand held focus stack?

Is it a modern version of extension rings?

Mick.

Hi Mick,

It is in camera focus stacking in the Olympus EM1X body and certain lenses. any stacking usually requires tripods/rails and time, the tech I have found is good enough now to use hand held.

I shoot 15 shoots and the camera does the stacking and saves a JPG. The original raw files are are available if you wish to do the stack again in software.

Not every image will turn out but it's handy when you don't want to carry a tripod when on a walk.

The camera will also do high resolution stacking that can be useful to blur water when you don't have ND filters handy or you forget how to use the inbuilt electronic ND option

Cheers
Phil

Phil, many thanks for that, I did an online search and found out much more about the procedure.

I never knew this was an in camera possibility, let alone a possibility with electronic cameras. Things certainly have moved on.......... hand held; wow!

Mick.

Latest Nikon mirrorless cameras can do this automatically by taking multiple shots and changing focus position slightly for each, but the menu to drive it is a bit clunky/limited.

Here's another approach to handheld focus stacking for older DSLRs

Helicon FB Tube – Helicon Soft

Originally Posted by Mr Brush

Latest Nikon mirrorless cameras can do this automatically by taking multiple shots and changing focus position slightly for each, but the menu to drive it is a bit clunky/limited.

That's how Olympus has done it for years, it's just that with the EM1X it is good enough to do it just holding the camera..... the real ability comes in understanding the aperture setting versus the step size for each image... the Oly firmware seems to do some tricky step distance v aperture calcs.

I haven't really explored it's potential on landscapes yet.

Here is another from the same day

stack2.jpg