@DougFraser wrote:Thanks for the details re Helicon. So did you think the DPP rendering of that first photo was reasonable compared to your end result had you used Helicon? It certainly looks very good to me but I don't know what you might be comparing to 🙂
I'm hoping DPP and or LR/PS are capable of everything I need simply because I have them already (although I don't use PS much). I would hope that with Adobe's massive market they will put enough into the PS stacking ability to satisfy me. I'm not doing anything professionally here 🙂
WOW! This came a long way from extention tubes, LOL. But that's why we chat and share knowledge 🙂
Really, the only down side to DPP, as far as focus stacking goes, is the touchup portion. It's just a little clunky compared to HF and I never could get some of them corrected (see attached photo). That may be remedied with the R5 and setting the number of shots a little higher than you would normally need. Once again, I just like the idea of setting point A, point B, aperture, then letting the software figure out just how many shots I need to cover that area. Yes, I'm leaving stuff out, like ISO and shutter speed, but you get the idea. When using HR, you just put your camera in manual, leave your lens to AF, and adjust settings by the way the image looks on your computer, just like in the EOS Utility. Please keep in mind that I've udated DPP 4 at least three times since I fiddled with its focus stacking, so they may have fixed some of my gripes.
DPP has served me well for other uses and, besides cropping and framing, it's all I use. I'm retired, but do sell some of my bird photos and donate some to the local Audubon Society. Macro is a passionate hobby 😉
The image I posted earlier was cropped from this photo or a similar one, I just don't remember (Hey, I'm old, LOL). This 19 shot stack covered about three inches. ISO 320, shutter 1/125, f/3.5. I only got one chance at this plant. It's a Dracaena Surculosa and is pollenated by moths, which means it blooms at night, one night only. That's why this shot is just the buds (it bloomed later that night). This particular plant has only bloomed twice in the 30 years we've had it, in fact, the last shots we took of it blooming were with an EOS AE-1 Program 35mm film camera and Canon 50mm macro lens.
Well I gave DPP and LR/PS a try - as a total novice. Somewhat surprisingly the final images (of urchins) looked almost identical! And I was quite happy with them - although brutally slow. Look at the urchin image below and let me know what you think - I took them off the shelf to photograph and the dust and cat hair is a bit offensive up close haha. I then just tried the orchid stack with DPP and there is definitely some ghosting and unsharp regions but overall still acceptable if not being enlarged a great deal.
Question - do you do any "batch" processing of all the raw images BEFORE running the stacking program? I normally use LR to process all my raw files and then export as jpegs but here I have run DPP and LR/PS without doing any preliminary processing so I then did a few adjustments to the jpeg in LR after the fact.
Here are the DPP results for the urchins and the orchid
