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DIY Focus Stacking for Macro Photography

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SilverSolder:

--- Quote from: Conrad Hoffman on June 30, 2020, 03:00:46 am ---I resort to stacking quite often. Some of the newer digitals have it built in. My Z6 does, but unfortunately the lenses I like to use are manual focus so I have to do it manually. I've tried focusing with the lens, focusing on a rail and focusing just the body, with the lens in a fixed position. Best results have been focusing the lens. The images can be put together with the free CombineZP, but it crashes with a lot of large images. Picolay is another free one, or there's the standard Helicon Focus and maybe a couple others.

--- End quote ---

Picolay has the best alignment algo of all the ones I've tried, far superior to Photoshop which tends to give up on low contrast images.

DrG:

--- Quote from: Conrad Hoffman on June 30, 2020, 03:00:46 am ---I resort to stacking quite often. Some of the newer digitals have it built in. My Z6 does, but unfortunately the lenses I like to use are manual focus so I have to do it manually. I've tried focusing with the lens, focusing on a rail and focusing just the body, with the lens in a fixed position. Best results have been focusing the lens. The images can be put together with the free CombineZP, but it crashes with a lot of large images. Picolay is another free one, or there's the standard Helicon Focus and maybe a couple others.

--- End quote ---

Just doing some reading about this. Do you make a distinction between focus stacking and focus bracketing? https://www.mu-43.com/threads/what-is-the-difference-between-focus-stacking-and-focus-bracketing.81617/

My current DSLR does not have focus bracketing. Some years ago, I played around with the Canon SDK and I wondered if it could be used to control the focus stepper. Looking around this morning, apparently the answer is yes - e.g., DSLR Bracketer http://milosparipovic.com/#/dev and now I am looking into DSLR Controller app for android https://dslrcontroller.com/ to control my EOS 200D.

*drat* there is a couple hundred hours of very cool stuff here :) curse you people  :) :) :)

Conrad Hoffman:

--- Quote from: DrG on June 30, 2020, 12:26:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: Conrad Hoffman on June 30, 2020, 03:00:46 am ---I resort to stacking quite often. Some of the newer digitals have it built in. My Z6 does, but unfortunately the lenses I like to use are manual focus so I have to do it manually. I've tried focusing with the lens, focusing on a rail and focusing just the body, with the lens in a fixed position. Best results have been focusing the lens. The images can be put together with the free CombineZP, but it crashes with a lot of large images. Picolay is another free one, or there's the standard Helicon Focus and maybe a couple others.

--- End quote ---

Just doing some reading about this. Do you make a distinction between focus stacking and focus bracketing? https://www.mu-43.com/threads/what-is-the-difference-between-focus-stacking-and-focus-bracketing.81617/

My current DSLR does not have focus bracketing. Some years ago, I played around with the Canon SDK and I wondered if it could be used to control the focus stepper. Looking around this morning, apparently the answer is yes - e.g., DSLR Bracketer http://milosparipovic.com/#/dev and now I am looking into DSLR Controller app for android https://dslrcontroller.com/ to control my EOS 200D.

*drat* there is a couple hundred hours of very cool stuff here :) curse you people  :) :) :)

--- End quote ---

I've never heard things described as in that link. Taking multiple images at different focus points and combining them to achieve "impossible" depth of field is AFAIK, focus stacking. Never heard focus bracketing before, but I don't get out much. ;-)

Once you start playing with this, you'll probably find it addictive.

SilverSolder:
To attempt to define some terms...

Exposure bracketing is basically shooting extra pictures exposed above and/or below the starting setting, to make sure you get at least one correctly exposed image (and/or use it for HDR photos).

Focus bracketing sounds like the same idea applied to focusing...  to be convenient, it really needs to be built in to the camera.

Focus stacking is a deliberate, intentional use of focus for a series of single shots, that you intend to use to create a greater whole.

mawyatt:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on June 30, 2020, 12:48:43 am ---
--- Quote from: mawyatt on May 08, 2020, 05:00:34 pm ---Focus stacking in macro photography
...
Piezo Electric Stage Development.
...
Hopefully some folks will find this interesting.

--- End quote ---

Took the time to browse a few of the links, and wow!  Very nice projects.   :-+
And the die photos, after focus stacking, are amazing.   :clap:

About the piezo stage project, does that model need pulses to move, similar with a stepper, or is it some sort of voltage to position actuator?  From your project logs it seems to me that your piezo stage is rather a piezo actuator than a piezo stepper.  If so, did you happened to experiment with a stepper piezostage, too?

I'm asking because one of my way too many bucket list projects is to experiment with a DIY nanostage (just a lump of piezo material for each axis, with an inertial weight attached at one side, and the free moving stage attached at the other side of the piezo lump, moving just by friction and inertia and a sawtooth waveform driving the piezo, no Archimedes screws, only free moving axis, similar with the idea from the inertial motor), and I will be very curious to learn how well a DIY piezo stage can perform.

--- End quote ---

The piezo stages are operated Continuous Closed Loop and use a strain gauge in a bridge configuration for position sensing. The piezo elements are continuous voltage driven by a low noise high voltage amplifer with the stain gauge as feedback and command position from a 16 bit DAC controlled by a RPi. See details at PM. Note linearity and the 750nm range! Think this was with 4nm DAC increment resolution.

https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=40510&hilit=Piezo+Stage

Hope this helps,

Best,

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