Oh my gosh!!! I just watched the video from Affinity. My first thought, is this “real” or “science fiction”? Must be real, and I do have Affinity Photo version 1.10.1 - probably needs updating or replacing.
Do I need “focus stacking”? I dunno. From watching this video, it’s a fascinating new tool. Maybe some year PhotoLab6 might have it? Can I do “focus stacking” manually based on separate images I take on my camera?
More things to think about for the future…
…added later… I don’t suppose there is any way to use “focus stacking” on my D750? …and if I did, how would Affinity Photo work along with PL4 for my editing?
You are so right. It was bad enough sorting the 600 plus images I took of the Patrouille de France. The initial sort wasn’t too difficult because the background was blue sky, so it was a case of “is there a plane fully in the frame or not?”
Here are 3, out of the 41 that remain, taken with the Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR. it’s a heavy brute but…
All processed in DxO with little more than the basic lens corrections and the odd slight crop.
Although I think it could be useful for avoiding diffraction in full depth landscape images focused at hyperfocal distance, the main use I will be making of it is for macro work.
Sure. It’s a post-processing thing. The “advantage” of the D850 is that you set the number of images, the step distance and then it takes the shots, moving the focus automatically in precise steps instead of having to judge it by hand. But you still have to blend them together afterwards and it does require an AF-S lens to work.
Like I said, no problem but a bit fiddlier, having to step the focus manually.
Personally, I would pass all the RAW files through PL, applying the default lens corrections and DeepPRIME, then export them all to either TiFF or DNG for blending in Affinity Photo. Finally, use PL to do any final tonal adjustments and sharpening, etc.
that’s a focus stack over 20 cm and put together with AP.
That’s another. Just this time the size of a bunch of snowflakes.
I do like focus stacking a lot. I dislike the way Nikon implemented it (only the very basics, not returning to the starting point) as well as in D850, Z 6 or 7. They’re not even clever enough to calculate the necessary steps by given focal length, distance and aperture. And if I need to try and find out, it would be very helpful not to have always bring the focus back to the starting point.
For some subjects I prefer a focus stack sometimes only because I can use a “more bokeh friendly” aperture and still get enough DoF.
Before you can post-process anything you need to take the focus-bracketed images before. I assume you never tried to stack manually?
One problem with new lenses is a rather small angle of the focus ring from closest to ∞. If you set your D850 to a small increment like 1 or 2 (out of 10) you hardly see the focus scale moving while the camera takes the stack. I also tried to keep the lens the same distance and moved the camera during the stacking. Meaning: Change of background to foreground proportions gives the software a hard time…
