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.

[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

[ebiggs1]

Thanx for the DPP4 info, you're never too old to learn. 🤔

[ebiggs1]

"... PS where you have to d/l a plugin, ..."

I am using PS 25 and I don't need a plugin to focus stack?

"... merge and align layers, ..."

Do you mean group layers? Edit > Auto-Align Layers. Leave Auto selected in the Auto-Align Layers click, OK. 

If you did exposure bracketing, also, while shooting, you need to first combine each set of exposures before stacking.