topic Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:21:17 GMT

I am trying to do some focus bracketing with my 90D. What I came up with so far is that it works in principal. But ...

Here is my understanding so far:
For focus bracketing to work you need Live View. In Live View the maximum focus points is with Zone AF - which is roughly a third of the view. As the number of pictures the camera take depends on the focus points activated while shooting this limits the result drastically. The object needs to be in the center of the frame which is manageable but not perfect for macro shots. But doesn't work for landscape photography.

I would be happy to wrong about this and I only need to change a setting, but I haven't found one yet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

Waddizzle — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:56:10 GMT

If the area that you wish to focus on in a landscape shot is outside your AF zone, then create then you must do it manually.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

p4pictures — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:41:13 GMT

Hi Manfred, welcome to the forums.

The following is correct

Focus bracketing requires the camera to be set to Live View
When in live view you can choose any of the four possible AF Methods, Face + Tracking, Spot AF, 1-point AF and Zone AF. Simply select the AF method that suits your needs.
You can choose the position in the frame of the spot AF, 1-point AF and zone AF methods.

Focus bracketing works by taking a series of pictures starting at the closest point where the AF is achieved. The camera then moves the focus a little further in to the scene and takes the next frame and so on until the selected number of frames has been captured, or the lens reaches infinity focus.

So for a landscape image, you can use a single AF point and position it on a flower that is 5 feet away from the camera even if that is in the lower left corner of the frame. The camera then takes the series of pictures with different subject distances and saves them to the card. Then you need to combine the individual frames to achieve an image with extended depth of field. This can be done using Canon DPP or other stacking capable software.

Please note that only a few lenses are compatible with focus bracketing. The EOS 90D manual has a list of the compatible lenses, and they are:-

EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM
EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM
EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
EF 180mm f/3.5 Macro USM
EF-S 35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM
EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM
EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

ebiggs1 — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 15:54:19 GMT

This is most likely a far better thing to do in Photoshop and not the camera. This is called focus stacking in Photoshop. You can use the Auto-Align Layers and Auto-Blend Layers to do it.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 19:45:31 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. I am trialling Zerene Stacker at the moment and I like it. It seems more capable then the PS solution.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 20:11:50 GMT

Thanks Brian. I will have to do more test shots. At the moment the maximum I get for my landscape shots is 5 or 6 shots. My settings are to the minimum of 1 at Focus increment and number of shots at 19.

With close subjects I get way more shots which is fine.

My Tamron macro lens and my Canon 1.4/50mm work for the focus bracketing.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

FloridaDrafter — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 21:35:25 GMT

@manfred9 wrote:

I am trialling Zerene Stacker at the moment and I like it. It seems more capable then the PS solution.

Don't overlook Canon's free Digital Photo Professional 4 (DPP 4). Although it is slow, image quality and post "touchup" tools are hard to beat, and I've compared them all. I've used Zerene but don't care for the hoops you have to jump through, plus no direct way to work with Raw files, (which I prefer to work with) although you can get a LR plugin, still more hoops if you prefer Raw. I also use Helicon Focus and it's capture program Helicon Remote which work together to shoot the stacks then process them. This program will use your Raw (CR2 - CR3) files and is compatible with most Canon and Nikon cameras. Helicon Focus is much faster than Zerene, Raw, Tiff, or JPeG stacks.

I currently use Helicon Remote to capture my stacks, it is truly a thing of beauty and as simple or complicated as you want it to be. It does a few things that you won't find in other dedicated focus stacking tools, like it will bracket focus and exposure at the same time, so you can stack exposure bracketed shots. It will also allow you to set a time increment between the shots used for stacking so you can use a flash, and it will do exposure bracketed time lapse.

I do also use the stacking feature in my MILC's for capture if I am to lazy to tether to my laptop, but I always use DPP 4 to compile and touchup the stacks because I can edit my Raw files and compile (stack) them in the same program. I've posted a couple of threads on this in the "Share Your Photos" section of this forum.

Newton

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

John_Q — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 23:28:37 GMT

Hello manfred9,

Brian does provide some really good information on this process. I would add that you can set the AF Area to [Automatic selection AF] which will use the entire AF area to focus, not like the [Large Zone AF] option which gives you the three which quadrants for focusing.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 01:03:29 GMT

Hi Newton, there is a lot of good stuff in your post. Will look into it. Have a trial for Helicon running as well at the moment will look into your comments

Will have another go at DPP. I stopped looking further into it when some of the .tiff formats aren't showing.

Thanks.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

p4pictures — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 05:48:21 GMT

For landscapes it is possible that your lens reaches infinity before the selected number of pictures is captured. This is due to the fact that at longer distances there is a greater increment between focus steps in all lenses. Focus increments will also depend on the aperture, even the finest increment is greater with the lens at f/16 than at f/5.6.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

p4pictures — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 05:52:39 GMT

Sorry John_Q but that Automatic Selection AF option is not available when using the required Live View mode for focus bracketing with the EOS 90D.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

ebiggs1 — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 20:43:24 GMT

Although I have DPP 4 I am not a big supporter or user but I don’t think it supports focus stacking. Its strong attribute is lens correction. And I do try other programs when time allows I always come back to the best IMHO and industry standard Photoshop.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

FloridaDrafter — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 23:12:05 GMT

@ebiggs1 wrote:

Although I have DPP 4 I am not a big supporter or user but I don’t think it supports focus stacking. Its strong attribute is lens correction. And I do try other programs when time allows I always come back to the best IMHO and industry standard Photoshop.

EB, DPP 4 has supported focus stacking for quite a while, since Canon included Focus Bracketing in its cameras, and does a good job. They call it "Depth Compositing" and can be found in the DPP Tools menu. In fact, it's quite a bit simpler than PS where you have to d/l a plugin, merge and align layers, etc. I've tried (bought) the best dedicated stacking programs on the market and DPP is as good at it as any of them in IQ and post touchup tools, albeit way slower, but it is free and I have time if nothing else 🙂 I like to start my stacks with Raw and DPP is the only one that does that. Sure, you can load your Raw files into other stacking programs, but they are converted to DNG or TIFF or whatever, usually with Adobe DNG Converter, but they do not allow you to edit Raw and stack the actual Raw files like DPP does.

TBH, I let my PS and LR subscriptions expire when I realized that I was doing all I needed to do in DPP and PSP, the later mainly for framing and cropping. Granted, I don't do weddings and portraiture any more which I feel is where PS shines. Your clients want to see art. I do nature photography, now that I have retired, so all I need is a little sharpening, saturation of various colors to make them "pop" a bit, and some odds and ends that DPP provides adjustments for. My approach is to get the shot right in the first place so very little is needed in post.

Newton

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:30:47 GMT

I am trying the stacking with DPP4 on a 1 year old mac at the moment and it is still running after 1.5hours for a 15 image stack.

One of the first things DPP is doing is converting the raw files into .bin files. So, I don't think there is a difference to other software converting to dng or tiff. But they are way faster. I get results after 2 minutes.

Manfred

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

FloridaDrafter — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:01:42 GMT

@manfred9 wrote:

I am trying the stacking with DPP4 on a 1 year old mac at the moment and it is still running after 1.5hours for a 15 image stack.

One of the first things DPP is doing is converting the raw files into .bin files. So, I don't think there is a difference to other software converting to dng or tiff. But they are way faster. I get results after 2 minutes.

Manfred

Hello, Manfred!

I'm using a 3 y/o Dell XPS 17 running Windows 10 Pro with just 16GB of RAM and it only takes 10-15 minutes to stack 20 shots from my 45mp R5, depending on if I used lens correction, NR, or other adjustments. The longest it's ever taken me to run a stack was 1.53 hours, and that was a 100 shot stack from my R5. Small stacks (20) like this from my 5D mark IV, R6, or R6 mark II are much faster.

As for making or converting Raw to a BIN file, I've never noticed that behavior in Windows.

Newton

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:04:38 GMT

Here is my test result.

DPP needed 1hour and 45 minutes - delivered the sharpest result (with one caveat) for a stack of 19 images. The images where shot at 6400 iso. An no noticeable noise. The one caveat is that it left out a few images for the longest focal range.

Second place in my test is Helicon. Some noticeable noise but covered to whole focus range and it was in under two minutes.

Third place is Zerene. More noise in PMax as expected. But DMax had more noise than the Helicon run. Time is comparable to Helicon.

I need to figure out why DPP left out the longer focal range and then it is a great solution if you have the time to wait. I think I will play around with DPP and Helicon to see if I can improve the results.

Manfred

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:11:36 GMT

Hi Newton, it seems very long. I am running another test. Since it took so long, I had the time what was happening in the folder of my images. I saw a subfolder created containing for each of my images a .bin image. So I assume this is the raw conversion done before the stacking operation.

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

FloridaDrafter — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:36:42 GMT

Hey there, Manfred!

If you want, post your stack on a sharing site and I will d/l and look to see why some of your shots weren't included, and run the stack myself to see what's going on with the time to render. That is just way to long in my experience. I will be happy to do that.

Newton

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

FloridaDrafter — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:51:01 GMT

Raw, of course 🙂

Re: EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

manfred9 — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:55:13 GMT

Have done four more runs with DPP. Same images as before. Time is now between 5 and 6 minutes, which is acceptable to me. Changed some of the parameters around in DPP but can't get the longer focal range as sharp as in Helicon or Zerene. I can paint it in with the tools but since my originals are at 6400 iso there is some noise there. Maybe I am a bit to obsessed with the details in the background.

But I have to say that I am totally impressed for 95% of the image, super sharp and no noise.

Of course could get the result into PS, use denoise software for the last two or three frames and stack them again.