Friday, August 07, 2020

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. 




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