The above image was made from a series of 15 images stacked with Helicon Focus. In this case, considering the size of the subject, I could have just grabbed a long telephoto to compress the DoF...but that's not the point.
I hope to write more in depth on this later but I will need to at least pick up a year license to the program (a mere $30, unlimited is $200). I recently download HeliconFocus but my 30 day trial is running out and I have just been too busy. If you are wondering what the heck I am talking about, Helicon Focus is a photostacking program which, just as you would expect, creates images with an extended depth of field from stacked, inherently shallow DoF macro shots. The possibilities are for all intents and purposes, are limitless, providing you have a computer to handle this monstrosity your defiant imagination has just created in order to prove me wrong. Theoretically, you can do it with a series of images from any focal length I suppose, but it is most commonly used for macro work (as well as MICROwork, that is images taken through microscope) since at such high magnification, your DoF becomes so shallow. ANYwho...being the junkie that I am, my first, most accessible subject was none other than....(drumroll) Vivitar Series 1 90mm, muwaha! Ok, so perhaps not all that exciting. Sorry! I'm workin' on it!
I actually did one of these type shots (manually of course) in PS for the Vivitar Series 1 105mm f/2.5. It sucked. This program does everything it took me hours to do, in 1-2 minutes. And it's good. I can't wait to put some bug shots through it!
No comments:
Post a Comment