Testing Focus Stacking

The last weeks I have tested taking photographs with my iPhone on my non scenicked layout.

I don’t run much trains nowadays, but do take a trip down to the layout room almost each day to empty the tank of my dehumidifier.

One evening the low norwegian sun came in through the window casting a nice light on the engines sitting in the yard.

I just had to pick up my iPhone and take some photographs.

Just a few days later I remembered James McNabs excellent post Focus stacking for Fun (and profit) on his The Hills Line blog, a nice switching layout being built.

He shows the steps using his iPhone and the app CameraPixels to take 10 photographs. Then he stitched the pictures in PhotoShop to a photo with great depth.

I had the free CameraPixels Lite app, and took some photos with it.

It has some limitations, so I bought the CameraPixels Pro app for just a few bucks or Norwegian Kroner (NOK).

I think the upgrade is worth it as I get full size pictures and can shoot with RAW format. I use the DNG format.

I bought a small micro stand for my iPhone and did take some testphotos with the lite version of the app.

I also somehow remembered that CameraPixels also has a remote control on my Apple Watch!

Then I don’t have to tough the camera when shooting, which eliminates blurry pictures due to shaking.

One note. Do give room for cropping the picture after stacking the photos as the stacking process is not perfect around the edges.

I used James McNabs process but imported the pictures in LightRoom first.

The only adjustment in LightRoom was enabling camera lens correction.

Then I exported the 10 pictures to PhotoShop.

I learned that since I go from LightRoom to PhotoShop that I had to do an other step in PhotoShop before stacking:

I had to choose all layers, then go to Edit, select Auto-Align layers and set Projection  to Auto

Then run Auto-Blend Layers with Stack Images selected. 

That is where the magic happens.

I then saved the picture and got it back as a TIF-file in LightRoom were I did cropping and final adjustments.

The whole process does not take a lot of time and is well worth the effort, at least I think.

There are of course other photo editing programs that are able of Focus Stacking.

The other day I went down in the basement and again found the sun shining through the window. I took the above photo lit only by the sun.

See the result using the CameraPixel Pro app and DNG above.

Here are some examples of my first efforts with the CameraPixel Lite app. 

OBAS Di3 in action on the P&SF

My very first attempt on editing a video with iMovie.
Shot with my iPhone7 when I just had an attack of model railroading.
Just wanted to run a train, and then got the desire to shot a video.
A far cry from a good video, but hey, model railroading is supposed to be fun!
And for me living with a serious disease causing me to not have opsessions for a couple of years, and also not been able to do much on the layout, or run trains, this felt good :)

Family Party

Front End Friday Family Party.
A norwegian type Di3, former NSB (Norwegian State Railways), now private owned OBAS 3.632 joines the family in Mobest Yard, Phoenix Arizona.
.. Or, is it the american relatives who have come from far away to Halden, Norway, just under 100 miles north of the Swedish Manufactor NOHAB in Trollhättan? The very same factory that built the Norwegian Di3's.
All of them has EMD 567 diesel engines! Or at least the prototype.

With our model railroads, anything can happen :)
The OBAS engine is the first norwegian I have bought for more than years when I swapped out my norwegian rolling stock with US models.

And this is why this model was a must. The railroad in my hometown Halden is electric territory, end of the InterCity line to Oslo. The OBAS engines was kind of a sensation here in march 2005, pulling a train with paper rolls for export.