focus stacking

[cegeiss]

<p>Upgraded the firmware of my E-M1 this week and tried out focus stacking. It took me a while to guess all the parameters (one could have googled an updated manual, I guess), but once I got it going it worked like a charm. Last night I took a few images of my messy desk (which I will spare you), but this morning I tried the procedure outside, hand-held without a tripod. Again, it worked amazingly well. I haven't tried image bracketing ,where you have more control over the focusing steps and number of images, but the silent shutter mode and focus stacking alone were worth the 30 minutes of recustomizing the camera after the update.</p><div></div>

[anthea50]

<p>Good one, Christoph, I haven't tried it yet, but will be when I get some other stuff done. There is a new manual (I think on the Oly site) but it doesn't really give many details beyond how to set it up.</p>

[johnfarrar]

<p>This is very impressive and seriously useful, but doing nothing for my wish not to buy a new body... Can you use any aperture or does the software limit you?</p>

[cegeiss]

<p>You can use any aperture/exposure combination that you like. I usually shoot in manual. Here I think the individual exposures were probably around 1/50 with an aperture of f/5.6. I could have gone slower and used a smaller aperture. It seems to me that the fully automated focus stacking takes your focus distance and focuses both closer and more distant, while focus bracketing focuses away from the focus point. In focus bracketing you can set how "fine" the bracketing is applied, how many images you want, etc. In focus stacking you focus at an appropriate part of your image, set the aperture and exposure and fire away. You end up with 8 RAW and JPEG frames plus one stacked jpeg.<br>

As far as new gear goes: I am hoping for a longer telephoto rather than a new body. Maybe next year.</p>

[Peter_in_PA]

<p>I wish they would update the EM-5's firmware to do stuff like this. But that's okay. I never buy a product based on what it "might" do one day.</p>

 

[ronhartman]

<p>Very cool feature. Looks like for now it only works with the Olympus 60mm macro, and Pro 12-40 and 40-150. Don't have any of these lenses, but tempted to get the 60mm just for that feature.</p>

[cegeiss]

<p>Ron, it requires one of those three lenses to do the automated stacking, but you can do focus bracketing with any lens and stack the images later in Photoshop. In that case you have vastly more control over the images as well.</p>