I began dabbling with it lately and - inspired by this comment - I though about diving deep in this topic and try to understand this function that works in a pretty cryptic way. Canon documentation says: trial and error -.-

The main questions are:

  • how many steps do I need?
  • how wide should each step be?
  • is in-camera stacking any good?

I used it a couple of times with my R6II and never got anything deleted when the in-camera stacking gave an error: it created a final JPEG with only a selection of the stack pictures (this behavior is very good I recon) and didn’t delete anything- maybe on tbe R10 it works differently?

I got a very nice JPEG out of one of my first tries, but I couldn’t say I learned how to do it consistently:

My aim is to set up a small guide with some tips and reference values (ideally find out the correlation between aperture value, focal length, focus distance and the resulting step size): do you have any hints, failure or success stories? Let’s discuss :)

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    4 months ago

    Late to the party with this.

    I’m probably the stacking expert around here. Basically every knife photo I take these days is stacked. Here is my advice:

    Forget the stacking function built into your camera. Use the bracketing function, sure, but toggle the stacking to off. Meditate and find your center. Breathe, and receive enlightenment: You paid $2600 for your camera and Canon shipped it with this feature in a broken state. Accept, and achieve nirvana.

    Even in the rare occasions I can get the damn thing to produce a final product the results are heinously subpar compared to doing it outboard on your PC, where you also have full control of the process. So do it on your PC.

    I use Helicon Focus for this. If you are allergic to spending money but not averse to tinkering, there is also the open source Focus-Stack. Helicon is also readily pirated but you didn’t hear that from me, alright?

    I use the smallest or second to smallest step size depending on my mood. How many steps to take is pure guesswork — the damn thing doesn’t tell you how far out it’s going to rack your focus in any real terms, but the good news is that if you overshoot this it does seem to automatically stop once it reaches the maximum end of the focal distance of your lens. (All of mine seem to be able to focus past infinity by a significant degree, I’m sure for some technical reason.)

    Start by focusing on the nearest point of your object and then manually pull your focus point back so it’s actually a little bit in front of the subject in real space. Fire.

    If you undershot your focus depth, it’s of no consequence provided neither your camera or subject move. Simply press the shutter again and it’ll take a new bracketing set starting from where it stopped with the last one, without you having to fiddle with anything.

    Once you transfer all of your focus bracketed images to your PC, simply discard the ones where none of the subject is in focus. Helicon makes this easy: You can import the entire slab of images and just shift + click to lasso the ranges of ones that are out of focus because your focal point was too far or too close. Mash that render button. Enjoy the result.

    • Etnaphele@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      Thanks for the hint on pressing the shutter again if stopping too short with the stack.

      I tried in-camera stacking several times in the last month and I find it actually works pretty well. As you say there is a lot of guesswork and I am only trying it on static subjects, but I find it pretty easy to use also handheld. When I find the time, I’d really like to deep dive in the parameters and all the technicalities of it.

      I am only a bit frustrated that this community is barely alive :/ for this, thanks a second time for contributing on this topic!