Focus Stacking: how to extend depth of field in Photoshop

Focus stacking is the new lens flare, which was the new off camera flash, which was the new HDR, which was the new….. there are always trends and fads and now it is focus stacking. This does make it sound as if I think this is a pointless activity but I don’t, in the right situation it is utterly brilliant and if you like making sharp pictures front to back, whether landscapes or macro flowers this is for you.

Shooting anything up close requires incredible patience and extreme precision. If your close-up photography isn’t sharp then you’re not only wasting pictures, but you’ve wasted hours of your time. In this in-depth tutorial we’ll show you how to use one of the most amazing Photoshop effects macro and close-up photographers can use: focus stacking.

Below we’ll show you step-by-step how to focus stack and extend depth of field when shooting close-up by shifting your point of focus in multiple images, which you’ll later stitch together so you can produce images that are sharp throughout the frame.

One of the best things about close-up photography is the wonderful softness that results from working with such a shallow depth of field.

Even at the smallest apertures the plane of focus will stretch to a couple of centimetres at most, and anything outside this range will fall off into beautiful bokeh.

At times, however, this can be a problem –especially if you’d like a completely sharp subject. Stopping down the aperture will increase depth of field, but sometimes this simply isn’t enough to achieve sharpness across the subject from front to back.

The solution: fix the camera to a tripod and shoot several frames, each with a small shift in focus, then use Photoshop to combine the sharp areas to create a single pin-sharp image.

Read the rest of this very useful article from Digital Camera World here

we have an advanced DSLR course where one of the things we teach is focus stacking, go here for more information

Sharp Shooter Proven Techniques for Sharper Photographs new ebook

Do you wish your pictures were a bit sharper, is it your eyes or your camera or worse your techniques that let you down.

This new ebook from the Craft & Vision stable has all you need to achieve sharper pictures. Sharp Shooter by Martin Bailey

This is an exciting resource for photographers looking to discover new techniques and tools for making stunning images! Sharp Shooter is a 36-page PDF and it’s a great edition to your digital library. Martin, in his usual clear and concise fashion, covers the gamut on the subject—from hand-holding techniques, stabilization, and what makes an image sharp in the first place, to macro-sharpness, depth of field, focus stacking, sharpening for final output, and more.

Excerpt

“Center, Manually Selected, or All Focus Points: Whether your camera has 9 or 61 focus points, you choose which to focus with. Many people favour the center focus point, because it’s often the most accurate and simply because it’s in the middle. Also, using all of your focus points with automatic selection can lead to the camera focusing on the wrong part of the scene. Another option is to either use just one or a small group of focus points, but select something other than the central group. Let’s explore when and why you might use these various methods.”

 

 

 

 

36 pages for £3.50 about 10p per page, bargain, get yours here

Depth of Field

At this point in our term we find ourselves talking about depth of field a lot to our students on our Understanding Your Digital SLR Camera Course and on our Understanding Your Compact Camera Course and on the Portrait Photography course it will also get an honourable mention on the Composition course. Depth of field is something everyone recognises but often ignores because it is not catered for in the fully auto settings many beginners choose to use. We think it is one of the most creative tools available to any photographer who photographs things that are reasonable static, which let’s face it is most of us. So I thought a little round up of past posts on the subject would be useful and make it easier for you to find these things on our blog.

©Keith Barnes Laos 2011

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/depth-of-field-a-photographers-guide-a-light-stalking-guide/

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/understanding-depth-of-field-and-showing-some-self-control/

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/08/04/8-effects-every-photographer-should-know-about/

https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/cambridge-in-colour-tutorials-intermediate/

Macro Flower Photography: A Tutorial in Focus Stacking

This tutorial by Harold Davis explains how you can use Photoshop to achieve crisp focus throught a macro image.

“The closer you get in macro flower photography, the fussier focus gets. Since “fussy” is not a technical term, let me explain. Because focus is inherently shallower as you get closer to your subject, slight variations of distance between camera and subject throw you out of focus very quickly, and even fully-stopped down you may not have enough depth-of-field for your entire photo to be in focus.

Certainly, stopping your lens down to its smallest aperture, observing whether you have the in-focus areas you want, and seeing if there is any way to position the camera to improve the amount that is in-focus is a good way to start. But bear in mind that stopping down a lens comes with some downsides: optically your lens may not perform best at its smallest aperture, and when the aperture is small you can’t use a shutter speed fast enough to stop motion.

An approach that often can surmount these obstacles is to use focus stacking: shooting at a number of different focal points and combining the images in Photoshop to create a hyper-focal image that has an extended area that is in focus.”…MORE

The Sweet Spot Lens Setting

From the august pages of Lightstalking…….

“In many photographic situations, you are going to want to either open your aperture right up (to minimise depth of field) or close it right down (to maximise depth of field). And while the effects of doing this can be great, the great irony of lens construction is that sharper images are often easier to get with mid range aperture. Here’s what you need to know about the whole scenario and finding the sweet spot.”.…….MORE

©Keith Barnes Thailand 2011

Click Here: The Sweet Spot Lens Setting That Will Give You Sharper Photographs

Cambridge in Colour Tutorials – Intermediate

If you have made it through the beginners tutorials then you will be ready for this section on intermediate tutorials. You will find many other fascinating tutorials on the Cambridge in Colour site.

These are helpful for refining technique and taking your photography to the next level:

Concepts: Understanding Depth of Field & White Balance
Editing: Using the Levels, Curves & Sharpening Tools
Equipment: Tripods & Lens Filters (UV, GND, ND & Polarizing)
Technique: Reducing Camera Shake & Utilizing Natural Light

 

© Christina Kirkegard Intermediate Photography Course 2011

Depth of Field – A Photographer’s Guide – A Light Stalking Guide

Light Stalking’s First Photography Guide
And it’s FREE!

A Photographer’s Guide to Depth of Field is our first photography guide and we’re giving it away absolutely free. No catches, no tricks – just hit the download button and get it on your desktop now.. get the download here

We teach this on our Understanding Your DSLR Camera, new dates next term coming shortly

36 Strong Compositions That Use Railway Tracks

Railway tracks provide an excellent subject with which to practice using leading lines in photography. If you can mix the obvious compositional advantages of the long lines with other good photography techniques, then you can get some great results. These photographs have largely managed to do that, many in an eye-popping way. So enjoy the collection and use it for ideas for your own leading lines shots. This article from those nice people at Lightstalking

For a master in composition, mystery, suspense and use of lines Henri Cartier-Bresson

Camera and accessory tutorials

Let me direct you back to Cambridge In Colour, a really great website with excellent tutorials. It looks as if they have made their web site even easier to navigate and have arranged their tutorials by type, here is a list of their camera based tutorials

Camera Types & Accessories

• Compact vs. Digital SLR Cameras
• Selecting & Using a Camera Tripod

Camera Lenses

• Understanding Camera Lenses: Focal Length & Aperture
• Using Wide Angle Lenses
• Using Telephoto Lenses
• Tilt/Shift Lenses: Using Shift Movements to Control Perspective
• Tilt/Shift Lenses: Using Tilt Movements to Control Depth of Field
• Macro Lenses: Magnification, Depth of Field & Effective F-Stop
• Macro Extension Tubes & Close-up Lenses

Lens Characteristics

• Camera Lens Flare: What It Is and How to Reduce It
• Camera Lens Quality: MTF, Resolution and Contrast

Camera Lens Filters

• Choosing a Camera Lens Filter: Polarizers, UV, ND & GND
• Understanding & Using Polarizing Filters
• Using Graduated Neutral Density (GND) Filters
• Using Neutral Density (ND) Filters

Caring for Your Camera & Photos

• Digital Camera Sensor Cleaning: Tools & Techniques
• How to Make Archival Digital Photo Backups
• How to Protect Online Photos: Copying, Watermarks & Copyrights
• 

Understanding depth of field and showing some self control

This is a really useful article from Jim Harmer at Improve Photography. Regularly in the classes I teach I find people who are so absorbed by shallow depth of field that they fail to see that some of the most important parts of their image are out of focus.

“I get it.  Depth of field is fun to play with and makes our pictures look amazing, but I’m here to say that more of a good thing is not always better.

Look at the image featured on this page of my beautiful wife, Emily.  The depth-of-field adds to this image to make her stand off the page; however, this image suffers from too shallow depth of field.  The depth of field was only about two inches in this picture because I used an aperture of f/1.8, a 50mm lens, and I was only two or three feet away from the subject.  You can see that part of her face is out of the plane of focus, and that is a bit distracting.  What I really wanted was to make her completely in focus and just blur out the background.  You might not be able to tell this on the small preview of the image, but it’s obvious if you click to make it big.  This post is for those of you who always crank the aperture down to the lowest number available.”…interested?...more

Too shallow depth of field – Jim Harmer’s mistake