EOS 90D Focus bracketing help for macro and landscape shots

[manfred9]

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.

[manfred9]

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

[manfred9]

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.

[FloridaDrafter · Accepted solution]

That's great, Manfred!

I did find those *.bin files. I remembered seeing them once I checked one of my stacking directories. They are in a folder named DPP_DC_1 in the Root of the folder that I have my Raw files. If you run the stack again, another folder will be created named DPP_DC_2. In each of those folders there is a .DATA.bin followed by DC_001, DC_002, and so on to the end of the number of shots in the stack. Those are bin files that contain editing info for post touchup, not converted Raw files.

I found this on an older web site - The Digital Picture:

"the DPP compositing tool comes highly recommended, especially for some of its processing features including the ability to adjust the amount of background blur in a final stacked result. DPP creates a folder in the same folder the stacked result (JPG or TIF format) is being written to. Binary files are stored in this folder including a large file for each image used in the stack along with a data file. These files are required for the adjustment functionality and can be deleted after the image is finished."

Newton

[manfred9]

Thanks Newton on following up on that and also for your help.

All good now.

Cheers
Manfred