Focus Bracketing a Yellow Woodsorrel, Oxalis stricta Flower
Mar 25, 2022 10:53:21 #
Roger2011
Loc: Central Illinois
Most people, unless they live in a desert or on an iceberg, probably have seen Yellow Woodsorrel, Oxalis stricta, a relatively small yellow flower suspended by a long, spindly stem that seems could barely support its load of green leaves and a few buds and flowers. They grow everywhere around us, so finding a subject to focus bracket wasn't difficult. But focus bracketing the small flower on my iPhone wasn't so easy. The problem is that even a flee sneeze will produce enough air current to make them bounce around, and that is often not good for getting multiple focus-bracketing images.
To get around the summer-breeze-messing-up-focus-bracketing problem I picked a subject and took it inside the greenhouse attached to our house. No, I didn't have to go outside for one because they were growing like weeds in some of our flowerpots right inside the greenhouse. I'm not going through all the details of what it took to get this single image here but plan to present a series of tutorials on many-things-related to focus bracketing on an iPhone and stacking on Affinity Photo or Zerene Stacker, right here in Smartphone Photography. Affinity Photo is on par with Photoshop and costs around $50, a one-time purchase. It will work great stacking iPhone photos.
Please keep this in mind: I am not a professional photographer, nor am I an amateur photographer, but am only a tinkerer. I have many more questions than answers, which is why I'm so happy to have just now discovered Ugly Hedgehog - Photography Forum.
I checked the EXIF data and it seems I took the photos and processed them around March 31, 2019, so indeed this flower would have come from one of our flower pots in the sunroom. I likely used my Moment macro lens, which has a usable focus range depth of about one centimeter and a working distance of one centimeter. This explains why most of the stem and back bud are not in focus because this lens wasn't able to focus that far out. I used the CameraPixels app in my iPhone XR and instructed it to take 50 images from near-focus to far-focus, a depth range of about one centimeter. The depth of field for this lens combination is very small, so many overlapping images may be required to get a reasonably sharp stacked image. Thirty images may have been enough, but 50 was handled quite quickly by Affinity Photo.
To get around the summer-breeze-messing-up-focus-bracketing problem I picked a subject and took it inside the greenhouse attached to our house. No, I didn't have to go outside for one because they were growing like weeds in some of our flowerpots right inside the greenhouse. I'm not going through all the details of what it took to get this single image here but plan to present a series of tutorials on many-things-related to focus bracketing on an iPhone and stacking on Affinity Photo or Zerene Stacker, right here in Smartphone Photography. Affinity Photo is on par with Photoshop and costs around $50, a one-time purchase. It will work great stacking iPhone photos.
Please keep this in mind: I am not a professional photographer, nor am I an amateur photographer, but am only a tinkerer. I have many more questions than answers, which is why I'm so happy to have just now discovered Ugly Hedgehog - Photography Forum.
I checked the EXIF data and it seems I took the photos and processed them around March 31, 2019, so indeed this flower would have come from one of our flower pots in the sunroom. I likely used my Moment macro lens, which has a usable focus range depth of about one centimeter and a working distance of one centimeter. This explains why most of the stem and back bud are not in focus because this lens wasn't able to focus that far out. I used the CameraPixels app in my iPhone XR and instructed it to take 50 images from near-focus to far-focus, a depth range of about one centimeter. The depth of field for this lens combination is very small, so many overlapping images may be required to get a reasonably sharp stacked image. Thirty images may have been enough, but 50 was handled quite quickly by Affinity Photo.
Mar 25, 2022 11:45:27 #
Wow! That’s a beauty, very sharp with lots of detail. I like that a lot. Nice work.
Mar 25, 2022 12:49:46 #
Mar 25, 2022 13:22:59 #
Roger2011 wrote:
Wingpilot, thank you.
You’re welcome. That’s a wonderful flower portrait.
Mar 25, 2022 16:16:42 #
Mar 26, 2022 10:27:12 #
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