Basil Loc: New Mexico

Rented a camper and drove 3 hours to location for a 3AM milky way shoot. Forecast indicated clear sky. At shoot time, sky was not clear, so the Milky Way shoot was a bust. Oh well, here are a couple just for fun pics I took on the trip. The first is a selfie taken at blue hour and the second set was an experiment with focus stacking. The first of the two is just with the foreground in focus. The second is 13 images stacked to have everything, front to back, in focus. This shot with R5 and RF 70-200 at 188mm, f/8

Posing with my 50 year old Martin D12-35


Scene with near field in focus only


Same scene but with 13 images "focus stacked"

UTMike Loc: South Jordan, UT

Interesting set, Basil. My wife has been frustrated more than once looking for a clear dark sky.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

cleardarksky.com had indicated "iffy" skies on the night/ morning in question, but skies should have been "clear" at the time of the shoot. They weren't. Problem is, I have to reserve the camera I rent well in advance, so it's always a bit of a crap shoot.

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Sorry about the not so clear skies. I like your photos but am wondering why you would stack the last landscape picture. Wouldn't you have done as well with f16 or f22 to get the same effect?

Dennis

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

I was thinking the same thing. I know focus stacking works, from some of the photos I've seen here but haven't tried it yet. I know my D850 will do it but then I have to get software to finish the job. As a committed minimal post processing kind of guy, that seems like the first step to disappearing down the rabbit hole!

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Very simple - I just wanted to experiment with focus stacking. Ordinarily I would have just shot the scene with F8 or F11 and focused a third into the scene. But, my newish R5 has the ability to fire off as many images as I want with progressive focus points, and I just wanted to try it out on a landscape scene. I figured f8 is about the sweet spot for the lens I was using (in terms of edge to edge sharpness) so I just wanted to try it out for the fun of it. And while smaller aperture single would yield "similar" results, there are down sides to stopping down too much (refraction being one). But in this instance it was just a deliberate attempt to experiment with focus stacking.

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Agreed. I would love to see a third photo, taken at f16 or f22 to compare it to the focus stacked photograph. I don't do focus stacking either, probably never will. But it would have been a good learning experience for all of us to actually see if the focus stacking is better, in this type of photography, landscape photography, than simply using a smaller f stop.

Dennis

bcheary Loc: Jacksonville, FL

Never trust weather forecasters!

dennis2146 Loc: Eastern Idaho

Thanks for the comment.

Dennis

Basil Loc: New Mexico

I should have done that just for grins.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Just for grins, I plugged in f16 to my Hyperfocal App and set my focal length at 188mm (what I shot that scene with). If you can believe this app, the hyperlocal distance would be 242ft, which would suggest that anything from half the hyper focal distance (121 ft) to infinity should be acceptably in focus. Put another way, as you get closer in (closer distances than 121 feet), things would not be as sharp. Whether this would result in, for example, the grass that is close in being noticeably out of focus, I can't say. With the focus stacking, there is not doubt that everything in the scene, from the very close grass, to the very distance hills, is going to be tack sharp.

This is not the kind of scene I would normally bother with focus stacking. Something like a sea shore, where you want to have very closely focused rocks, or something like that might make more sense for focus stacking. But it was a fun experiment.

NOTE, had I been shooting wide angle (say, 24mm) the hyperlocal distance would have been much closer in (everything from 2 ft to infinity in focus at f16), but with telephoto, the hyperlocal distance becomes larger as the focal length increases.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

There are two things about focus stacking that make it more appealing. First, f/22 will be introducing some diffraction into the shot, affecting sharpness. Second, while that 242 foot “in focus” range means the circles of confusion within that range are acceptably in focus, but those at the front and back of the range will be larger than those at the hyperfocal distance. With focus stacking every distance that it focuses on will have the smallest possible circle of confusion, leading to a potentially sharper image.

SuperflyTNT Loc: Manassas VA

If you have an R5 what camera could you possibly be renting for the shoot?

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Dang, I meant I rented a camper, not a camera! LOL

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Look at it this way, at least, you had your guitar with you.... Nice shots!