FOCUS STACKING with A Nikon D850
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- Опубликовано: 2 мар 2019
- Responding to numerous requests for this video, we are pleased to share with you a tutorial on focus stacking with a Nikon D850.
Tom Mackie explains what is focus stacking in landscape photography, when you would use focus stacking and what type of composition best works for creating this type of image.
Focus stacking is known as focus shifting on the Nikon D850 and the camera has a great system to simplify the process. Tom discusses this and shows you the camera settings he uses to create an image. He also discusses focus stacking in Lightroom, focus stacking in Photoshop and other software he has found that works well.
We hope you find this video useful and if you have further questions please do add them into the comments below.
Thanks for watching!
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I’ve been thinking about getting a D850 just for this purpose. I like macro photography but it’s a challenge with my D500.
Thanks for a well done video.
Nicely shown and explained Tom thanks. For the benefit of others the two pieces of focus stacking software mentioned were Zerene Stacker and Helicon Focus. Note l have no affiliation with either product.
Best d850 photo stack tutorial I've seen. Well done.
Thank you!!
thanks again for sharing your passion with us:-)
Thanks Tom for demystifying this technique. Just got around to using this feature on my D850 for the first time in a woodland in the New Forest, Hampshire, UK.
Thanks Tom. I’ve had my D850 since they first came out. I shoot only landscapes, and have tried this feature awhile ago. It works but seems more geared towards macro, or the type of image you were shooting with the huts. Personally I prefer to be in control. Using AF with back button focusing I usually take 3 shots: infinity, a third from bottom of the frame, and finally to closet object to the lens. Works a treat every time.
Cheers Kev, yep it can be a bit time consuming for some shots, but I do find it handy for somethings. Its really down to finding what works best for you. Thanks for sharing.
Well done Tom Thanks
Thanks Tom, I've used this before, but still nice to have this as a reference.
Thanks Trevor
Thank you Tom. I think I was one of those folks requesting this lesson.
You were indeed Janet - we aim to please, especially those who have supported our channel so consistently. Thanks you!
Tom, Can you do a video showing how to do this in post?:
"Focus breathing is a problem with some lenses but if you are using Photoshop to stack the images you can overcome this by aligning the images before you blend them. Photoshop does a good job on this and will resize the various layers as needed to make them align OK.
One tip though...before you blend the images, select all the layers and crop the image slightly to get rid of the transparent pixels at the edges that were introduced with the alignment step because these will cause problems with the blending process if not removed."
Hi Tom, very good explanation of this feature. I have the D850 over one Year now and I really love it. I use this function from time to time. It is much easier than manually. But always keep in mind, don’t shoot to close, leave a bit space around for cropping because the different focuses changes the view a bit. I did this mistake in the beginning. On landscape it is not so important but I also love stairs and staircases and there it really matters. It sucks If you loose the corners especially when you figure it out at the end of stacking and editing.
Thanks for feedback Markus and glad you found it useful.
auto align layers in photoshop and no need for cropping
Thanks, that's an excellent and very useful video, not only for Nikon users but for owners of other brand cameras as well.
I own a Fuji X-T3 which has this same feature and while I haven't done a lot of serious work with it yet I have played around with it quite a bit and so far I'm very impressed.
Among Fuji users there's quite a bit of confusion about the effects the Focus Width Step settings make to the number of images captured. From experiments I have done so far this setting has a huge effect on the number of images captured, particularly when using long focal lengths where the natural depth of field is so shallow.
With the X-T3 my experiments seem to indicate that a setting of 10 moves the focus point with each shot by a distance equivalent to the depth of field of the lens at whatever aperture the lens is currently set at. I have found that using a setting towards the higher end, but less than 10 (around 7 or 8) produces the necessary number of images to get a good stack on most occasions but macro shots sometimes require a much lower setting.
You are right about Photoshop. Most times it will produce a usable stack but often needs some manual blending to get the best results. I haven't tried the other software packages.
Thanks for feedback!
I'd like to see more on the post processing. Ring Stacker was mentioned a couple of times and also the ability to edit motion artifacts. It would be nice to learn a little more about that.
Thank you for this, I've been wondering how this was working. 3rd reason to get a D850 ...
Thanks Casper - hope it helps with your shopping plans!
very helpful , thank you. what if i wanna bracket the focus stacked images, will the camera get the different exposures on all the focus stacked photos?
Hello; thank you for your explanations. What is your suggestion for setting of new folder or reset folder in the menu?
Many thanks for sharing. Very helpful. 2 questions: have you done AF tune on your lenses to make AF is accurate? Alternatively, would it be possible to focus on 1st point using live view + manual focus and then switch to AF before starting focus stack sequence? Many thanks
Thanks for this, Tom. Amy thoughts or suggestions on choosing an aperture to use? And how does the number of shots taken relate to the aperture chosen? As others have mentioned, doing the actual stacking in post is what's missing here. You mentioned doing it with PS, as well as other programs specific to stacking. Seeing it done would be helpful, since you said you would be doing it in the video.
Thank you!
You are welcome, thanks for watching
Tom thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. I'm currently thinking about a D850 as an addition to my D700. I've looked at the "Z" series and the only issue I have with them is the much smaller body size, to small for my large hands.
That's what I found as well, the D850 just fits like a glove.
THANKYOU...
Thanks for sharing your knowledge Tom. I've done macro focus stacking with a focusing rail, but haven't done it in a landscape setting. Good info. One question: I see a debate over using rule of thirds grid versus the PHI grid based on the Fibonacci Sequence. They're similar, but somewhat subtly different. Do you concern yourself over these differences, or just let your trained eye determine composition?
Hi Hank - I like to keep things as simple as possible and have a well trained eye after 30 years plus full time shooting! Thanks for your feedback.
Does it only work with a Nikon lens? I got the sigma 105mm for macro today and it doesn't work with my d850. I can turn the focus stacking on but all pictures look the same with the focus point
Thanks Tom for the great vlog one thing I'd like to know , do I use Aperture Priority or Manual? I just got my D850 on the 29/12/2019
Mainly aperture, but always depends o the shot
What would the key differences from doing this focus stacking to doing macro focus stacking? Than you for all your videos.
Hi William - its really just a question of focal planes. Macro is likely to only have a small spacing (i.e a petal of a flower and then you want to keep something in the focus behind it). The type of scene we illustrated had lots of focal planes (effectively each beach hut) so thats the main difference. Hope that helps. All the best.
can we use manual lens for focus stacking or autofocus lens only required?
You mentioned apps that allows this for cameras without this feature. Can you name them? Also, would have loved to see the post-production part
How many points for focus: 9, 25, 72 or 153 ?? Dynamic or just normal, AFC or just AF dos focusing only works on the area that curser can move or all 36x24 screen ??? thank you
For Panos is a fixed Start and Endpoint necessary.
It’s why I’m saving for a d850
What was the focus point set for? Example Auto, group or single D9 ,D21 D51 ?
Tom, you said to take a photo of your finger to show the start and end positions. Within the Focus Shift setup you can click >New Folder< to have all the photos in the series put into their own folder so you can easily find and manage each series. This may have been covered by someone else here and if it was, sorry to repeat. Hope this helps, Mike
Mike, yes I'm aware of this feature, but find it fiddlely when shooting. It's just much quicker to take a photo of your finger.
@@LandscapePhotographyiQ i hear ya, thanks
Were you using the 70-200 lens? Thoughts please on why you used a telephoto and what zoom mm did you use. We’re you trying to increase size of distant cabins in image? Thanks again!
Hi Molly, yes I was using the 70-200mm to compress the shapes of the beach huts that created a tunnel effect. The zoom mm isn't important, but using a telephoto lens that naturally compresses perspective is. There is less depth of focus with a telephoto lens so using focus stacking with a longer focal length will enable complete sharpness throughout. Hope this helps.
Tom--thanks for an excellent tutorial. FYI, I believe Helicon will work with Raw files (NEF for Nikon), but Zerene will not. Zerene's need to be converted first. Question--if my first and closest photo needs a single focus point (on the right), but the distant image is on the left, how do you deal with the different focus area?
It's not an issue having to convert RAW to TIFF then import into Zerene Stacker, just make sure they are 16-bit TIFFs to get the most colour depth. In answer to your question, once you set the closest focus distance to the camera and I assume you are using an auto function such as focus shifting on the Nikon D850, this will focus through the scene in incremental focus movements. I say focus movements, because that's what the lens is doing, moving through the scene and not locking focus on various points of the subject. This is why you will end up with several images that are completely out of focus so just delete them. Hope this helps, thanks for watching.
The Z7 also provides this function. From what you said in this video, I am guessing that the Auto-Focus must be turned on because the camera decides on its own what the adjusted focus points are. Is that true? Otherwise, I use the touch screen focus capability to manually touch more frequent in-close focal points and more spread out distant focal points. Is this even necessary using the technique you demonstrated?
Yep, its on auto. Thanks for watching and feedback.
Hello Tom, I have the same camera as you and am wanting to do focus stacking, but the features 'interval timer shooting' and 'focus shift shooting' are not available. I've tried restoring the camera to original settings, but have been unsuccessful in getting the features available. Do you have any tips/tricks/suggestions on how to get them un-greyed? Thanks in advance!!! Love your video by the way!
Hi Kristin, have you set the clock on the camera? I know it sounds strange, but it won't work if you haven't set the clock in the settings. Another issue might be with the lens you are using. Are you using a Nikon lens?
Do you start the focus stack/shift on the D850 or is it also possible to use the remote? Very nice, interesting and helpful vlog.
Yes and yes, there are some apps that will allow you to operate the camera remotely, but I have always carried this procedure out on the camera.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for the excellent video. I'm a landscape photographer who has used 4x5 film most of my career. Wind is often times the element that determines whether I successfully capture an image, or not. f32+ requires those long exposures, as you well know. Is there a way to focus stack with the D850 that will allow me to expose all the images I need for an average landscape scene, within 1 or 2 seconds? Say 4-9 images, providing the shutter speed being used is 1/8 of a second or faster? Thank you in advance for answering my questions!
Hi Bruce, in answer to your question, it can't shoot a series of images within 1 or 2 seconds. Depending on the number of images required to capture all the focus points, it will take several seconds and longer depending on the focus steps you set in the menu. I generally set it at 2 so to complete say 10-20 images it will take around 20 seconds. My question is why do you need to shoot that quickly? is it because of moving elements in the scene? If so, you can fix this using Zerene Stacker when you combine all the images. I did another video showing how to do this. Thanks for watching.
@@LandscapePhotographyiQ Hi Tom, thanks for your reply. Yes, I want to ideally be able to shoot in 1-2 seconds to eliminate any issues with wind on vegetation, etc. I don't own a D850 but am considering it. I read in the online owners manual that there is a 3 second delay before the D850 begins exposing once you tap to start the focus shift process. Also read where if the stacking interval is set to 00, the camera has the potential to shoot 5 frames per second during the stacking process. Doing the math, I came up with the potential to complete the process in 4-5 seconds if the stack requires 5-10 images. Your thoughts? Thank you!
What tripod are you using?
Would you kindly do a video on manual focus stacking ?
Thanks for feedback - we have added it to the list for considerations. Thanks for the request.
Thanks Tom. Why would you take a first shot with a finger in front if D850 prompts you to open a new file for the series.
Thanks! 30 year habit of marking my series with start and finish shot. Speeds things up in LR too for finding what you need rather than squinting at file numbers! Just my workflow, but there is no right or wrong!
Thanks of the video! I have an important question, though. I have a d850, but my 24-70mm lens shows a lot of focus breathing. This causes the focal length to change ever so slightly with each image. It's not a simple matter of auto aligning the images. How do you handle this difference in post processing? Because of the slight change in focal length, the objects in the images won't line up properly because they change in relative size from image to image. If you can make a video showing exactly how to handle this in post, or can direct me to a video or article showing how to deal with this problem, I'd really really appreciate it!
Focus breathing is a problem with some lenses but if you are using Photoshop to stack the images you can overcome this by aligning the images before you blend them. Photoshop does a good job on this and will resize the various layers as needed to make them align OK.
One tip though...before you blend the images, select all the layers and crop the image slightly to get rid of the transparent pixels at the edges that were introduced with the alignment step because these will cause problems with the blending process if not removed.
Thank you! This resizing process - does PS stretch the 'smaller' objects (in the images with the shorter focal distance) to fit the 'larger' ones (in the images where the focus is on objects further away in the image) as opposed to condensing/shortening the larger objects so they align with the smaller ones? Also, does this process cause any softening of, or aberrations in, the various objects? I don't have access to PS at the moment. Thank you very much for your help!
@@mrs.danforth6690 To be perfectly honest I've never paid that much attention to how many layers are stretched or condensed but some layers are definitely condensed creating transparent pixels at the edge, However the difference in sizes of the individual images due to focus breathing is very small so the resulting adjustment in the size of the images is small as well and has no visible effect on the quality.
Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions! Cheers from Canada :)
Hi Tom, I’m using a Nikon D750 so I don’t have this feature; I focus stack manually. When I do landscape photography and I need to focus stack, I usually just take 3 - 4 photos. Now, if and when I upgrade to D850 (which takes up so much storage per photo), I only want to take as many photos as necessary when I do focus stacking. That said, how do you replicate taking just 3 - 4 photos with automatic focus staking (with the foreground all the way to background still in focus)? Do i Set the number of shots to 4, and then set the focus step width to the highest possible number (10)? Are there disadvantages to this approach? Thanks.
Hi Glenn - really depends on the scene you are shooting and the spacing between the different applicable focal planes that contain the elements you require in focus. In the example we used if there had only been 4 beach huts further spaced apart and nothing in the background I was worried about capturing, my set up would have reflected this. Hope this helps and good luck with your shopping plans in due course. For me, this feature on the D850 clinched the deal for Nikon and convinced me to buy mine - so far, absolutely no regrets! All the best.
Hi Glenn, I have a D750, could you advise how you photo stack please
Dear Tom. In this video, The first shot I see you set camera on auto focus and take first shot at your hand. How do you set camera to take the final shot at infinity ? Thank you very much. Tony Le.
Tony Le The camera continues taking photos past infinity until it can’t advance anymore, usually 2-3 shots past infinity (for landscape shots). Those shots taken past infinity will of course be blurry and you’ll discard them prior to blending.
@@robertguyton7406 Thank you very much.
cool focus stacking is one of those things I never took the time to learn :(
Hope you enjoy trying it out
Which software you use for stacking?
Beyond adobe standard stuff, I referenced Zerene Stacker and Helicon Focus.Hope this helps
Olympus also have this feature on the OMD-EM1 mkII and I think others too.
Yep - suspect other brands will also embrace this technology soon Ray
...mirror up...you also save your shutter :-)
I am having a little bit of trouble grasping the concept. These focus stacking tutorials all talk about starting by focusing at the front of an image composition, maybe even a little bit in front of the actual desired start point and then selecting anywhere from 10 to 100 total images stepped from most narrow to most thick. The composition can be something small or as big as a landscape vista and the camera will step from the beginning all the way out to infinity or the final most far away focal point whichever comes first.
In my mind an interval of say 2 which is considered narrow versus an interval of 5 which is considered thick and each doing 100 images in succession, if the #2 interval covers the distance of say a flower then an interval of 5 should be covering a city block. None of these tutorials discuss the actual range of distance covered or what the aperture setting is doing to the end result in terms of distance covered and lastly everybody but one person says use Manual mode with one person saying use Aperture mode. If in Aperture mode, will the aperture setting move around automatically for some reason if controlled by the camera?
Thanks for any clarification.
Hi Dave, basically this technique is used when you want to go beyond the technical capability of your lens to result in the sharpest image detail from the closest point to infinity. Using an interval of 2 vs 5 will result in more images to complete the focus series. I always use 2 for the most part to get all the focus points. You should be using the optimal aperture of the particular lens that you're using to achieve the sharpest results. I've seen videos where the photographer suggests using f/16 which is totally counter productive and pointless in using this technique. I rarely using /16 in most cases because the sharpness falls off significantly (only situation would be to get a sunburst then sharpness is a trade off). If you use an aperture of f/8 vs f/11 it was take more images to complete the focus series because there is less depth of field. When it comes to which exposure mode to use I always use aperture priority, but either aperture or manual will work just fine. I hope this has cleared up the focus stacking technique for you. Let me know if you have any other questions.
@@LandscapePhotographyiQ
Hi Tom and thanks for your response. I have watched this particular video of yours more than once over the years as I refine my approach and technique for photography in the field.
I am still fishing when it comes to focus stacking.
I completely understand the concept that a wider aperture and shorter depth of field is going to require more shots to cover the desired distance within the chosen composition. What I have no idea of is how to rough estimate the number of shots to cover that distance at the chosen aperture and I think that is why I am not yet having much good luck when attempting focus stacked and post processed shots.
I have no problem with doing more than one sequence and bringing it home to see which one best accomplishes what you are trying to do in a particular shot but I would prefer to keep it to a minimum by knowing roughly what the number of shots requirement will be for a given distance at a given aperture setting. My choice would be to do multiple sequences to capture the composition that has the least amount of say wind motion rather than tinkering around with stack settings without much of an idea if I am covering the range of distance within the composition.
This is a repeat comment that I originally made on this video two years ago:
"I'd like to see more on the post processing. Ring Stacker was mentioned a couple of times and also the ability to edit motion artifacts. It would be nice to learn a little more about that."
Ok people ONE REALLY IMPORTANT THING NOT ONE VIDEO IN STACKING TELLS YOU ...
Make sure the d850 clock is turned ON ......YES THE CLOCK ....IT WILL NOT work unless you have turned the d850 clock ON and set time and start it
Not one video mentions this
I was not aware you could turn the D850 (or any other camera) clock on or off. I know you set up the time/date and time zone but can you please elaborate on what you actually mean.
@@andrewthomson7367 when you buy a brand new d850 the clock isn't set
@@nevvanclarke9225 yes you set the time to your area of the world but the clock is running. I am not aware of any setting to actually turn it ON. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Andrew Thomson mo mine came with nothing on, no time no date no region .....no nothing ....all good now
waste of time if you ask me
Each to their own Doug, but thanks for sharing your point of view