Focus Blending Capture in Field Techniques For 5DMK 2 Users

Focus blending seems to be the biggest trend around here, at least in the ESS gallery. My issue with this has been during capture. I am interested in reading about how others use their cameras (specifically 5DMK2) to achieve this technique. I usually do everything manually and it seems very tedious. Also, when you take 8GB or more worth of pictures on a trip - how do you differentiate which pictures are for what? e.g. If you shoot the same scene twice with different shots at different focal points how do you not get confused when you try to process a week later?

Thanks so much for your time and assistance in this matter.

Michael

I have a very simple method that addresses most of those issues (space, tediousness, confusion)... I don't take many pictures Think of those poor guys like Lon that still use big sheets of that film stuff..

On a possibly more helpful note.. if space isn't a big issue for you, and it's just the organization that's confusing you, you could take dark frames (super fast shutter speed, or with a lens cap on) to separate sequences. But usually I find it's pretty easy to sort them visually.

If you need to separate frames, a finger in front of the lens for one frame works great. As for blending, if the frames to blend are in a series, visual sorting is a piece of cake.

I'm new to trying this method and I use Phils method by holding my hand out in front of the lens at the start and end of the series.

I have yet to start, but I’m going to use a field log to jot down notes on the image numbers.

Since converting to the digital persuasion about a decade ago I've used the system described by Phil.

Those frames of my hand are relatively inexpensive ( cost = $0.00), so if each series is not to be segregated in a separate file I find it helpful to separate two consecutive series by TWO frames of my hand. Ergo, a series with one hand frame at each end is surrounded by single frame image's, but whenever two consecutive hand shots are present I know that there are two series separated thereby. I shoot a lot of two- or three-frame panos, sometimes several sequences of basically the same scene but from slightly different perspectives. The "two- hand"separations can really be helpful / necessary when a number of similar series are exposed in sequence. Of course, all the frames carry a number of a sequence by which it all can be sorted out, but the hand -shot "parentheses" are quickly recognized tags.

Ain't this digital age a wondrous time?

Dave Graham
East River, SD

If I take 3 images to focus stack, I'll take a picture of my hand holding out 3 fingers when I'm done. That way I know the previous 3 frames go together. This might not work so well when stacking a very large number of images.