For years I had envied artists and their ability to 'make their own light' in their paintings and have their scenes perfectly light balanced, while photographers had to meter for either the light or the shadows and accept the result, or result to dodging and burning which often times was either very time consuming and/or resource intensive (darkroom days). Now, with HDR and focus stacking, what your eye sees in the field is now what you can get in the final product. Pure genius. Thanks for the tutorial.
My biggest takeaway was "Just go out and shoot." I get stuck with Analysis Paralysis when it comes to weather conditions. The rest of the tutorial is just the frosting on the cake. Thank you for posting these. I'm learning a LOT!
Informative video! It seems like you would focus at the first spot on the berries and do a bracket, focus on the second spot and do a bracket and focus on the third spot and do a bracket and you would be finished except for the processing. At home you would just focus stack the three bracketed shots once they were merged into an HDR image. Moving the focus point and taking images and then going back and bracketing seems like it would take a lot more moving around and time.
When I got my first DSLR I was fascinated by macro photography and HDR. So I did a lot of focus stacked HDR to offset my gear’s limits (because a rebel T7 and kit lens is not amazing for either). I still often use exposure stacking when doing a panorama or other situations where there’s a huge dynamic range (shooting a car with a vibrant sunset in the background for example). I’d just never made the mental jump to using focus stacking & HDR for landscapes or similar situations. Great video again Mark!
I've been doing video as part of my work for a while and realized with a slight investment I could explore photography. I've enjoyed learning to see the world around me through a different "lens".
You just solved the fast lens problem of focus and blurring and not all, even close, not in focus!!! Thanks for some more play time ideas out in the backyard.
I appreciate your tutorial and have been enjoying your videos. I would like to make a couple of points. First, I don't think this scene needed exposure bracketing. You could have found a better situation for this example. Second, I would like to disagree with your order of operations in capturing your exposures. Why wouldn't you exposure bracket (auto) at each focus location? By changing your focus location at each of your three "exposures", I think you are allowing for potential variability in what is in focus. This could allow for specific local patches that are not in focus, potentially being very obvious. I have not done a lot of this myself, so perhaps there is something I've overlooked.
Once again, this advice goes completely along with fishing. If you wait for perfect conditions, you wont get out much. If you don't get out much, in the end, you won't be as successful. Anyway, using this technique looks great :) Now do it 5 frames wide, by 5 frames tall, for a 25 shot stitch, which has, not only perfect focus and perfect exposure, but crazy high resolution too :) I want to see a shot done like this with 1+ Gigapixel resolution ;)
Great video. Nice to see how others are doing this process. I have found that when I shoot a 5 shot bracketed exposure (2 stop per bracket) I get one shot with enough dynamic range where I don't have to do any exposure blending (90% of the time). That way I do 2-5 bracketed shot sequences for focus and let the camera handle the auto bracketing exposures. Then I determine (1) which shot in the bracket meets all my exposure needs; (2) grab the same shot sequence from the bracketd shot groups; (3) apply basic settings, sync, align; (4) complete the focus stacking process with the selected shots ; (5) process the final bracketed composite with needed adjustments in LR or PS. Just speeds up the process a little bit.
Great Job! For me it's a lot easier to take the exposure bracketing on every single focuspoint first, blend into HDR in the RAW converter and then do the focus stacking. This way it's a lot easier to see, if photoshop works well with stacking. 😉
This information was very helpful. I just completed studying a NYIP course and the last thing I studied was focus stacking. Of course, I understood what it was. But now that I have seen your video, you make it so easy to fully understand. Thank you.
This might have been asked and answered, but does it matter if you focus stack first, then blend exposures, or can you do it in either order? I was also wondering if it would be easier to auto bracket shoot each focus point and proceed from there, rather than going through the exposures one at a time with a series of focus points.
Perfect! Having the error of too few focus points in the video really drove home. Much more effective than a squeaky clean how to video . As always, thank you.
Content is always great. What I really like most is your honest disclosure of who you are. I feel like I'm in your office and you're talking to me. Telling me, "Oops I shouda taken another set or two focused here and here." Well done Mark.
Great video! As a small aside that's a bit off topic, one reason most camera bag layout systems are crap is because they force you to set dividers that allow for a particular lens mounted on the camera. Meaning you had to swap back to the other lens just to put the camera away, the alternative would have been a more annoying re-shuffle of the velcro dividers. Swapping lenses in the field is probably my biggest peeve, and bags are crap at facilitating this.
You've inspired me to go try this! I've done both types of bracketing, but never together. I like Fuji's implementation of focus bracketing - it's good for not accidentally getting too few shots. You could fairly easily set that up and run it three times with manually adjusted exposure. Thanks for sharing this technique!
Have been wanting to experiment with Focus Stacking but hadn't considered combining bracketing and focus stacking together. Your explanation of the process was clear, hopefully I can make it work.
I’ve practiced this technique last time I went out chasing waterfalls but my workflow was a tad different. When I’m at a focus point I’d take my 3 exposures for the bracket then my blank then change focus and repeat. Then I did all 3 hdr stacks first with same edits then threw it into photoshop for the focus stack. Now I’m no pro and it seemed to have worked fine but do you feel that’s a improper way or a way that could cause some issues?
Hey Mark. Another great instructional video. I have, however, one question and one comment. Question. When changing lenses with the mirrorless camera do you have a problem with dist on the sensor? Comment. Going from LR to PS and back to LR for the focus / bracketing operation then the fiddling about in PS to focus stack seems a lot of unnecessary work when the whole exercise can be done in two steps in Affinity photo and achieve the same, if not better, result.
That was an fantastic explanation and video on how to do this. I just recently learned how to bracket and focus stack and was then wondering can I do both on one image. Thanks for the info Mark!
Honestly you had me at bookmark LOL that was brilliant. I've got an older Rebel T3 and it only does three brackets but if I get my exposure right and create different exposures in Affinity Photo and save as different file names THEN bring those files in I can easily do 5-7 brackets and avoid my cameras' limitation.
Thanks Mark, took a similar shot recently in the UK using F16 to try and achieve a sharp image. Might return and try this technique. Now I just need the right conditions.... More importantly I need to be able to find the area where the berries were as most bushes seemed to be devoid of them.
Don't know if I've missed the answer but could you take one focus point and bracket that, then move to the next point and bracket. Do your exposure blending first then focus stack you 3 exposure blended shots? Cheers and great video
Obviously I'm not Mark so I hope my answer is helpful. My workflow in the field is bracketing every shot I take, so I take 3 exposures for every focus point like you suggested. However you can't exposure blend and then focus stack because you'll never blend the images the same way. It makes a lot more sense workflow wise to stack your exposures and then blend them together. Hope that helps
Thanks so much Nial - glad you enjoyed it! Absolutely! The most important thing is that you capture all the exposures needed for your exposure bracket for each focus point to be used for the focus stack - the method in which you accomplish this isn’t super critical as long as you capture everything you need for the exposure blend and focus stack👍
I've learnt a huge amount in just 17 mins. Thanks for posting this video. I'm also currently doing that "wait for the perfect conditions" thing although I still take the camera out 'just in case'.
Sir i am a big fan of yours...i like the details and information of your blogs...As a beginner the photographers struggle with the watermark orb logos in their photography...it will really be interesting to listen a talk from you about the size, positioning and importance of watermarking on the photos....and what is your experience in watermarking??
I have such a hard time with my camera, I can't check focus in live view, so rely on eyepiece, but when I check it afterwards, there's always a blurry area. So frustrating! Thanks so much for the info, still learning, which says a lot about the teacher!
It was good to see the process play out, i focus stack, and exposure bracket but have yet to combine the two techniques. Will feel a little more confident giving it a go now. Thanks mark !
I like the video so I will go ahead and write comment. When you go ahead and pick the focus points, do you go ahead and make the exposure right away? Or do you go ahead and just set it up. I like when you go ahead and process in LR. I am going to go ahead and try this out ASAP. Sounds redundant to me and my English teacher.
Thank you for sharing your expert knowledge in photography. My husband and I also teach photography at a local college. One of the ways we teach is to show our students a RUclips like yours. We then do the process in class so we're sure they know how to do it and they have the RUclips to reference in the future. We are interested in your backpack. We like the way it opens on the side that faces your back. Could you please give us the make and model of it. Thanks in advance.
Great video Mark! Next time try using an external device to set the autofocus points so you don't move your camera around before you take each picture!
ALWAYS learn something new from your videos Mark 👌🏻 Defiantly will be trying this on my next outing. You are right, it does sound more daunting than it really is. It also helps how you calmly explain the process from beginning to end. Once again much appreciate your time and effort you put into making these awesome and informative videos 👍 Hope you and the family are well.....
Just trying to follow the Bracketing /Focus Stacking. So you take 3 sets of Bracketed photos for a total of 9? Then do you Bracket one dark image from each group? Thereby Bracketing the over exposures together, and then the 3 under exposed photos and then the 3 correct photos from each of the 3 sets? Or do you Bracket the 1st 3 images (under/correct & over exposed) together, then go do the same to the 2nd set of Images, then the 3rd set ... resulting in 3 Bracketed Images? Then Focus Stack those 3 Bracketed images. Just to clarify the sequence, because I must have done something wrong. Thanks Gordon
Thanks for the great video. I love the idea of taking a picture of your hand between stacks. I always have trouble figuring out which pictures are supposed to go together. Usually have to dig up my old version of Nikon ViewNX-i.
You've done a good delivering on this process. I think your audience would benefit from more presentations on this process - it helps with our creativity. Thanks Mark
Well that's an easier way than my first time doing it, I did a focus stack a couple of days ago of a sunset. But i did the exposure bracketed set of images first and then did each focus image at the same exposures of the bracketed sequence, then combined them but i was pretty happy with the outcome but I'll be doing it this way from now on
Hey Mark, I use an XT3 as well and I think the in camera bracketing and focus stacking modes are absolutely fantastic, you should check them out! It saves some time and avoids having to touch the camera and probably moving it.
@@MarkDenneyPhoto I get it, it is nice to be able to control everything, that way we are the only guilty ones if something goes wrong lol. Greetings form Mexico!
Good video! I am puzzled however. Why not do the exposure bracketing first since most cameras will do this automatically without having to touch(move) the camera; then do three focus point sets using each bracketed set?
Great video. Very informative 👏🏻....and right there with you looking out the window wishing I just headed out instead of missing the light or great atmosphere. Again great stuff. Keep’em coming. 👏🏻
Very helpful video. Im curious if you find yourself exposure bracketing more with Fuji than when you used Sony? I had gotten away from bracketing mostly because I didn't bother to setup a tripod. I have always struggled with shadows shooting Fuji. This video has given me a couple theory's to test. THANKS!
I wonder what's your opinion on in camera bracketing. It seems to me that the method used here is great if you have a full control of the subject, meaning there is no wind, no movement, everything is stable. However if the conditions are not ideal, it's much harder to achieve.
Instead of using a photo of my palm, I hold up one finger for the start of the series and 2 fingers for the end. I had to do this becuase once everything from my session was loaded, it was hard to tell if a palm photo was the beginning or end of a sequence as there we a few series of the same scene.
Can you combine all this with progressivally introduce a variable sunshade-hood from far behind the camera until all the way right up front eventually cover the front lens from strayight and possible specs.. ? 😅 (shockingly missing, otherwise for me most generous, clear and pleasing tutorial. Thanks ! ! !
Thanks for the hand in front of lens trick. I’ve been doing mine as -, 0, + order for my brackets and I can see them okay. It seems we should be able to take only two shots of a scene: focus / exposure on foreground, then focus / exposure for background for a total of two shots. Why doesn’t this idea work to do it all in just two shots?
@Mark - thank you for this video. I use the Sony a7r5 which has the auto focus bracketing feature build in. It doesn't blend the photos in-camera it stores each set of focus bracket file into each folder. So in this case, each folder would house a set of focus bracket files for each exposure. In your video, you priority exposure first and then focus stacking. My method due to Sony's auto focus stacking feature, I would combine the focus stacks first for each exposure and then perform the HDR merge at the very end. Do you see any issues with this workflow where the order is switched?
I think what also people could have meant was if that's ok to bracket and focus stack different parts of the scene which are in different proximity and tone. E.g. when you bracket for the bright sky and focus on it, then bracket for the foreground and change the focus again. Will the blended image suffer from possible quality loss on tone bracketing edges which now would be in different focus?
I noticed in your first focus stacking video you didn't mess with edits until after the focus stack. Is order important here? Can you bracket your three photos in each focus range, then focus stack and then edit. I'm a rookie, just picked up a camera 2 months ago, I'm taking a photography class as an elective, I'm a history major so slightly over analytical. Thanks for the great videos.
Hi I have lot of help on your videos thanks! I have a question I’m new in Fujifilm i watch that at the beginning of this video when you change the things on your dials is reflected on your lcd in real time, how do you that?
Love this video and all your videos. I have one question. Well May be two - 1. Why did you use a higher ISO for this shoot? 2. Do you, or can you do a video on ISO settings. How to adjust your shutter and aperture accordingly?
For years I had envied artists and their ability to 'make their own light' in their paintings and have their scenes perfectly light balanced, while photographers had to meter for either the light or the shadows and accept the result, or result to dodging and burning which often times was either very time consuming and/or resource intensive (darkroom days). Now, with HDR and focus stacking, what your eye sees in the field is now what you can get in the final product. Pure genius. Thanks for the tutorial.
I would like to thank all the computer programmers that have made this video possible. And you Mark, for making sense of it all.
I don’t know why but the intro was so calming
My biggest takeaway was "Just go out and shoot." I get stuck with Analysis Paralysis when it comes to weather conditions. The rest of the tutorial is just the frosting on the cake. Thank you for posting these. I'm learning a LOT!
The beginning setting up the tripod changing lenses is it just me that finds the sound so satisfying, another great video👍😁
I feel the same way - love the sounds of photography!
I've been wondering about this for a while .. Thanks for sharing.. very useful
I completely agree! It was my first impression - very calming and enticingly ritualistic. Yet another outstanding video in content & production.
Informative video! It seems like you would focus at the first spot on the berries and do a bracket, focus on the second spot and do a bracket and focus on the third spot and do a bracket and you would be finished except for the processing. At home you would just focus stack the three bracketed shots once they were merged into an HDR image. Moving the focus point and taking images and then going back and bracketing seems like it would take a lot more moving around and time.
I agree! I would also do it the way you describe it except I would do the focus stack merge first in the post process, just like Mark did.
Thank you for another excellent video Mark. Brilliant work.
For the past several months, that has been my top question I wanted answered. Thanks for making it easy to understand!
When I got my first DSLR I was fascinated by macro photography and HDR. So I did a lot of focus stacked HDR to offset my gear’s limits (because a rebel T7 and kit lens is not amazing for either). I still often use exposure stacking when doing a panorama or other situations where there’s a huge dynamic range (shooting a car with a vibrant sunset in the background for example). I’d just never made the mental jump to using focus stacking & HDR for landscapes or similar situations. Great video again Mark!
I've been doing video as part of my work for a while and realized with a slight investment I could explore photography. I've enjoyed learning to see the world around me through a different "lens".
You just solved the fast lens problem of focus and blurring and not all, even close, not in focus!!! Thanks for some more play time ideas out in the backyard.
I appreciate your tutorial and have been enjoying your videos. I would like to make a couple of points. First, I don't think this scene needed exposure bracketing. You could have found a better situation for this example. Second, I would like to disagree with your order of operations in capturing your exposures. Why wouldn't you exposure bracket (auto) at each focus location? By changing your focus location at each of your three "exposures", I think you are allowing for potential variability in what is in focus. This could allow for specific local patches that are not in focus, potentially being very obvious.
I have not done a lot of this myself, so perhaps there is something I've overlooked.
The hand shot idea is so good! I recently took bracketed and focus stacked shots and they are SO hard to tell the difference in Lightroom (haha!)
Once again, this advice goes completely along with fishing. If you wait for perfect conditions, you wont get out much. If you don't get out much, in the end, you won't be as successful. Anyway, using this technique looks great :) Now do it 5 frames wide, by 5 frames tall, for a 25 shot stitch, which has, not only perfect focus and perfect exposure, but crazy high resolution too :) I want to see a shot done like this with 1+ Gigapixel resolution ;)
Thank you, now l am wiser about focus stacking!
Great video. Nice to see how others are doing this process. I have found that when I shoot a 5 shot bracketed exposure (2 stop per bracket) I get one shot with enough dynamic range where I don't have to do any exposure blending (90% of the time). That way I do 2-5 bracketed shot sequences for focus and let the camera handle the auto bracketing exposures. Then I determine (1) which shot in the bracket meets all my exposure needs; (2) grab the same shot sequence from the bracketd shot groups; (3) apply basic settings, sync, align; (4) complete the focus stacking process with the selected shots ; (5) process the final bracketed composite with needed adjustments in LR or PS. Just speeds up the process a little bit.
Thank ya Mickey! That's a great workflow - I usually end up taking more than I need as well just to be safe.
Great Job! For me it's a lot easier to take the exposure bracketing on every single focuspoint first, blend into HDR in the RAW converter and then do the focus stacking. This way it's a lot easier to see, if photoshop works well with stacking. 😉
Yes! I’ve been waiting for this video!
Hope yo enjoyed it!
This information was very helpful. I just completed studying a NYIP course and the last thing I studied was focus stacking. Of course, I understood what it was. But now that I have seen your video, you make it so easy to fully understand. Thank you.
I have subscribed and watched all of your videos. This is an older video, but it was a game changer for me. Thank you so much. Keep up the great work.
I could hug you for that hand trick. The rest of this is way above my grade still but that simple tip was worth the trip.
Honestly, I like that not all of the branch was in focus. It added more visual interest, at least to me, than if it was all focused and razor sharp.
This might have been asked and answered, but does it matter if you focus stack first, then blend exposures, or can you do it in either order? I was also wondering if it would be easier to auto bracket shoot each focus point and proceed from there, rather than going through the exposures one at a time with a series of focus points.
Perfect! Having the error of too few focus points in the video really drove home. Much more effective than a squeaky clean how to video . As always, thank you.
Content is always great. What I really like most is your honest disclosure of who you are. I feel like I'm in your office and you're talking to me. Telling me, "Oops I shouda taken another set or two focused here and here." Well done Mark.
Really appreciate that Gregory - great to hear you enjoy the videos!
Yes, I like seeing the "oops" in the process, because that helps us really learn. Bad examples vs. good examples of composition, exposure, and so on.
Great video! As a small aside that's a bit off topic, one reason most camera bag layout systems are crap is because they force you to set dividers that allow for a particular lens mounted on the camera. Meaning you had to swap back to the other lens just to put the camera away, the alternative would have been a more annoying re-shuffle of the velcro dividers. Swapping lenses in the field is probably my biggest peeve, and bags are crap at facilitating this.
You've inspired me to go try this! I've done both types of bracketing, but never together. I like Fuji's implementation of focus bracketing - it's good for not accidentally getting too few shots. You could fairly easily set that up and run it three times with manually adjusted exposure. Thanks for sharing this technique!
Have been wanting to experiment with Focus Stacking but hadn't considered combining bracketing and focus stacking together. Your explanation of the process was clear, hopefully I can make it work.
If you have any questions after you try it out just let me know!
Your videos are so informative and delivered in an easy to understand, and more importantly apply tutorial. Thank you kindly.
I’ve practiced this technique last time I went out chasing waterfalls but my workflow was a tad different. When I’m at a focus point I’d take my 3 exposures for the bracket then my blank then change focus and repeat. Then I did all 3 hdr stacks first with same edits then threw it into photoshop for the focus stack. Now I’m no pro and it seemed to have worked fine but do you feel that’s a improper way or a way that could cause some issues?
Very helpful, Mark. Thanks. You combined two techniques that I'm trying to master.
Thanks Mark, you are a great educator.
Hey Mark. Another great instructional video. I have, however, one question and one comment. Question. When changing lenses with the mirrorless camera do you have a problem with dist on the sensor? Comment. Going from LR to PS and back to LR for the focus / bracketing operation then the fiddling about in PS to focus stack seems a lot of unnecessary work when the whole exercise can be done in two steps in Affinity photo and achieve the same, if not better, result.
That was an fantastic explanation and video on how to do this. I just recently learned how to bracket and focus stack and was then wondering can I do both on one image. Thanks for the info Mark!
Honestly you had me at bookmark LOL that was brilliant. I've got an older Rebel T3 and it only does three brackets but if I get my exposure right and create different exposures in Affinity Photo and save as different file names THEN bring those files in I can easily do 5-7 brackets and avoid my cameras' limitation.
love this style of photography.
Lol, I was just thinking about visualising an image before going out to take photos, and making it a part of my process. Thanks for this!
Thanks Mark, took a similar shot recently in the UK using F16 to try and achieve a sharp image. Might return and try this technique. Now I just need the right conditions.... More importantly I need to be able to find the area where the berries were as most bushes seemed to be devoid of them.
Don't know if I've missed the answer but could you take one focus point and bracket that, then move to the next point and bracket. Do your exposure blending first then focus stack you 3 exposure blended shots? Cheers and great video
Obviously I'm not Mark so I hope my answer is helpful. My workflow in the field is bracketing every shot I take, so I take 3 exposures for every focus point like you suggested. However you can't exposure blend and then focus stack because you'll never blend the images the same way. It makes a lot more sense workflow wise to stack your exposures and then blend them together. Hope that helps
@@AlexArmitage wow that great Alex and thanks for the reply. Love your work too 👍👍
Thanks so much Nial - glad you enjoyed it! Absolutely! The most important thing is that you capture all the exposures needed for your exposure bracket for each focus point to be used for the focus stack - the method in which you accomplish this isn’t super critical as long as you capture everything you need for the exposure blend and focus stack👍
That’s great with a touch screen focus. Mine doesn’t so I think I would do the 3 exposures first since I can auto bracket that.
I've learnt a huge amount in just 17 mins. Thanks for posting this video. I'm also currently doing that "wait for the perfect conditions" thing although I still take the camera out 'just in case'.
This is great to hear Ali - thank you!!
I've used the focus stack bracketing in cameraa for my Fuji. it works well to pick focus points. You then stack in program
Sir i am a big fan of yours...i like the details and information of your blogs...As a beginner the photographers struggle with the watermark orb logos in their photography...it will really be interesting to listen a talk from you about the size, positioning and importance of watermarking on the photos....and what is your experience in watermarking??
I have such a hard time with my camera, I can't check focus in live view, so rely on eyepiece, but when I check it afterwards, there's always a blurry area. So frustrating! Thanks so much for the info, still learning, which says a lot about the teacher!
Nice and all explanatory video ..what exposure communication you prefer for plus minus.....one stop or 2 stop for 3 stop compensation
Thank you for this video. I was wondering how you would handle a moving subject in this situation without raising the ISO? Many thanks
It was good to see the process play out, i focus stack, and exposure bracket but have yet to combine the two techniques. Will feel a little more confident giving it a go now. Thanks mark !
Glad to do it Timothy!
I like the video so I will go ahead and write comment. When you go ahead and pick the focus points, do you go ahead and make the exposure right away? Or do you go ahead and just set it up. I like when you go ahead and process in LR. I am going to go ahead and try this out ASAP. Sounds redundant to me and my English teacher.
Thank you for sharing your expert knowledge in photography. My husband and I also teach photography at a local college. One of the ways we teach is to show our students a RUclips like yours. We then do the process in class so we're sure they know how to do it and they have the RUclips to reference in the future. We are interested in your backpack. We like the way it opens on the side that faces your back. Could you please give us the make and model of it. Thanks in advance.
great video Mark, i used to do this photos with only three shot but i changed for more focal points. thanks
Much appreciated Gerson!
Great video Mark! Next time try using an external device to set the autofocus points so you don't move your camera around before you take each picture!
Thanks a lot Mark, it's really something that almost every photography lover needs to know about, nice job.
Glad you found it helpful!
Your videos are great I’m a film shooter moving into digital
Great video, makes focus stacking and exposure bracketing seem easy
Clarity itself superb video
This will give me something to learn and try for the new year.....thank you Mark....Happy Holidays and have a great and healthy New Year.
Happy holiday’s to you as well Robert!
ALWAYS learn something new from your videos Mark 👌🏻 Defiantly will be trying this on my next outing. You are right, it does sound more daunting than it really is. It also helps how you calmly explain the process from beginning to end. Once again much appreciate your time and effort you put into making these awesome and informative videos 👍 Hope you and the family are well.....
Thank ya friend! Hope you and your family are doing good as well!
Thanks, the idea with the hand is good !
Thank you for sharing. It's been really helpful and the taking a photo of your hand between stacks is a very good tip!
Just trying to follow the Bracketing /Focus Stacking.
So you take 3 sets of Bracketed photos for a total of 9?
Then do you Bracket one dark image from each group?
Thereby Bracketing the over exposures together, and then the 3 under exposed photos and then the 3 correct photos from each of the 3 sets?
Or do you Bracket the 1st 3 images (under/correct & over exposed) together, then go do the same to the 2nd set of Images, then the 3rd set ... resulting in 3 Bracketed Images?
Then Focus Stack those 3 Bracketed images.
Just to clarify the sequence, because I must have done something wrong.
Thanks
Gordon
Add panorama and some hdr bracketing into the mix and make sure youve got a free scratch disc and maximum amount of memory in fast computer.
Thanks for the great video. I love the idea of taking a picture of your hand between stacks. I always have trouble figuring out which pictures are supposed to go together. Usually have to dig up my old version of Nikon ViewNX-i.
awesome info helpful, and issues I have with haveing to have perfect conditions just gotta go out alone or not
You've done a good delivering on this process. I think your audience would benefit from more presentations on this process - it helps with our creativity. Thanks Mark
Many thanks Dennis!
Great info and tutorisl. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing.... I am learning more about this process, so many thanks for information... Cheers
Glad to do it Robert!
Well that's an easier way than my first time doing it, I did a focus stack a couple of days ago of a sunset. But i did the exposure bracketed set of images first and then did each focus image at the same exposures of the bracketed sequence, then combined them but i was pretty happy with the outcome but I'll be doing it this way from now on
Hey Mark, I use an XT3 as well and I think the in camera bracketing and focus stacking modes are absolutely fantastic, you should check them out! It saves some time and avoids having to touch the camera and probably moving it.
They do work pretty well, but I find I usually like to control exactly where the focus points are in most scenarios.
@@MarkDenneyPhoto I get it, it is nice to be able to control everything, that way we are the only guilty ones if something goes wrong lol. Greetings form Mexico!
Good video! I am puzzled however. Why not do the exposure bracketing first since most cameras will do this automatically without having to touch(move) the camera; then do three focus point sets using each bracketed set?
Great video. Very informative 👏🏻....and right there with you looking out the window wishing I just headed out instead of missing the light or great atmosphere.
Again great stuff. Keep’em coming. 👏🏻
Thanks a million man!
Super video tutorial....I can’t wait to try this advice! Thanks!
Thank you for doing this video Mark. It answers the question I had a few videos ago.
Glad to hear it AJ
Great video (as usual) Mark... pragmatic and clear! In this case it's about the process not about the pictureitself... we got that! Thank you!
Thank You ... Thank You... Thank You... so much for this informative tutorial , I am so happy that you made a video on this 🤩
Awesome to hear - hope you enjoy it!
Very helpful video. Im curious if you find yourself exposure bracketing more with Fuji than when you used Sony? I had gotten away from bracketing mostly because I didn't bother to setup a tripod. I have always struggled with shadows shooting Fuji. This video has given me a couple theory's to test. THANKS!
I wonder what's your opinion on in camera bracketing. It seems to me that the method used here is great if you have a full control of the subject, meaning there is no wind, no movement, everything is stable. However if the conditions are not ideal, it's much harder to achieve.
Instead of using a photo of my palm, I hold up one finger for the start of the series and 2 fingers for the end.
I had to do this becuase once everything from my session was loaded, it was hard to tell if a palm photo was the beginning or end of a sequence as there we a few series of the same scene.
Good one, Mark. Nice to be walked through the process.
Thanks Stephen! Hope you enjoyed it!
Can you combine all this with progressivally introduce a variable sunshade-hood from far behind the camera until all the way right up front eventually cover the front lens from strayight and possible specs.. ? 😅
(shockingly missing, otherwise for me most generous, clear and pleasing tutorial. Thanks ! ! !
Really valuable information Mark, appreciate the time and effort you put into these videos to help the beginner.
Thank you.
Glad to do it Ross and a big thanks for checking it out!
Thanks for the hand in front of lens trick. I’ve been doing mine as -, 0, + order for my brackets and I can see them okay.
It seems we should be able to take only two shots of a scene: focus / exposure on foreground, then focus / exposure for background for a total of two shots. Why doesn’t this idea work to do it all in just two shots?
Mark, as always really to the point explanation , thank's much !
Full of information and really well explained. Has helped me understand the process. Many thanks.
Great to hear Daniel!
@Mark - thank you for this video. I use the Sony a7r5 which has the auto focus bracketing feature build in. It doesn't blend the photos in-camera it stores each set of focus bracket file into each folder. So in this case, each folder would house a set of focus bracket files for each exposure. In your video, you priority exposure first and then focus stacking. My method due to Sony's auto focus stacking feature, I would combine the focus stacks first for each exposure and then perform the HDR merge at the very end. Do you see any issues with this workflow where the order is switched?
I think what also people could have meant was if that's ok to bracket and focus stack different parts of the scene which are in different proximity and tone. E.g. when you bracket for the bright sky and focus on it, then bracket for the foreground and change the focus again. Will the blended image suffer from possible quality loss on tone bracketing edges which now would be in different focus?
That was a whole lot of good information Mark! Wow 🤩.
Now to put it into practice- thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge!
Thanks so much Jackie!!
Well put across Mark....!
I noticed in your first focus stacking video you didn't mess with edits until after the focus stack. Is order important here? Can you bracket your three photos in each focus range, then focus stack and then edit. I'm a rookie, just picked up a camera 2 months ago, I'm taking a photography class as an elective, I'm a history major so slightly over analytical. Thanks for the great videos.
You need to get metal spikes on your tripod there , a lot of movement there with rubber feet on the mushy ground.
Thank you I have learn a lot
I'll have to try this soon. Great video!!
Another great video Mark. Thanks for the great instruction!
Glad to do it Robert!
This is what I’ve been missing!! Great video and very informative! Thank you Mark!
Thanks Ben! Excited to hear that
Hi I have lot of help on your videos thanks! I have a question I’m new in Fujifilm i watch that at the beginning of this video when you change the things on your dials is reflected on your lcd in real time, how do you that?
Interesting and helpful video. Thanks.
Do you ever use in-camera focus stacking?
Great video , Glad for all the info you put out and keep it up
Many thanks Mark!
Love this video and all your videos. I have one question. Well May be two - 1. Why did you use a higher ISO for this shoot? 2. Do you, or can you do a video on ISO settings. How to adjust your shutter and aperture accordingly?
Thanks so much! I had it cranked up at one point just so that the camera’s lcd was easier for you to see on camera.
@@MarkDenneyPhoto love it! I have such a hard time with the iso for some reason especially at night.
Love your outdoor videos. And great explanation of combined focus and exposure stacking.
Thanks so much!
Wonderful video mark. Was looking for this
Thanks Raja!
Awesome work Mark, would help me a lot in future.. thanks
Much appreciated - thank you!