Posted by Mark Windom on February 10, 2008 at 3:39 PM
Can anyone recommend a good article that describes the technique for stacking images to increase depth of field in macrophotography?
Thanks in advance.
Posted by Mike Moats on February 10, 2008 at 5:34 PM
Hey Mark, there's a program that I have used that works very well. heliconfocus.com
Posted by Paul Wegemann on February 10, 2008 at 6:44 PM
Mark.
Google will turn up a number of articles on DOF stacking, but having experimented with this I can tell you it's pretty tedious to do it by hand. As you change focus, the focal length changes and you have to resize each image to match the others otherwise the blend won't be accurate. As Mike Moats stated, Helicon Focus works really well. The only negative is that it's pricey. A good freeware package that I use is CombineZM - http://hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/News.htm
Ignore references to movies. It works just fine on still images and it's free. The only downside is the steep learning curve if you want to move beyond the basics.
Focus stacking is very popular in photo-microscopy, so if you don't find what you're looking for, google on that.
Good luck with this. It's kind of addicting.
Paul
Posted by Carl Battreall on February 10, 2008 at 9:29 PM
Digital Photo Pro just published an article on the subject. Its in the latest issue.
ImageJ can do everything, according to my imagine analysis friend. I checked it out, and sure enough there is a plug in for focusing stacks of images. I haven't tried it. Search ImageJ it will blow your mind.
Discussion
4 repliesThanks in advance.
Google will turn up a number of articles on DOF stacking, but having experimented with this I can tell you it's pretty tedious to do it by hand. As you change focus, the focal length changes and you have to resize each image to match the others otherwise the blend won't be accurate. As Mike Moats stated, Helicon Focus works really well. The only negative is that it's pricey. A good freeware package that I use is CombineZM - http://hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/News.htm
Ignore references to movies. It works just fine on still images and it's free. The only downside is the steep learning curve if you want to move beyond the basics.
Focus stacking is very popular in photo-microscopy, so if you don't find what you're looking for, google on that.
Good luck with this. It's kind of addicting.
Paul
Pete D.