Designed for the most demanding needs of photographers and videographers.
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Focus Stacking
This article is part of a series. See Introduction to Camera Features to start.
Focus stacking is the only means by which full sharpness near to far (depth of field) can be achieved on modern high resolution cameras.
Requirements:
- Must operate FAST so as to minimize issues from lighting or movement changes.
- Supports use of autofocus or manual focus in magnified Live View to specify starting point.
- Supports use of autofocus or manual focus in magnified Live View to specify ending point.
- Must support focusing to frame edge for starting/ending points.
- AF required for shooting the sequence
- Optional support for manual focus sequences (for manual focus lenses) with auditory and visual feedback of next focus position.
- Control over step size.
- Accounts for field curvature to determine INF. Best done by image analysis while taking (NOT pre-called lens profiles, which can be wrong for individual lens samples).
- ADon’t do stupid stuff like 50 badly blurred frames past INF (Nikon does that).
- Option to preconfigure near-to-far setups eg 1m to INF, 3.5m to INF, etc.
- Auto detect near/far blur boundaries and narrow step size locally for superior stitching results.
| Sony | Nikon | Fujifilm | Canon | Panasonic | Leica |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NONE | does not understand INF (keeps taking images way past INF), does not offer far point, too slow which causes stacking issues as scene changes | serious bugs with tele lenses, no ability to focus in outer zones even in Live View | NONE | NONE (no useful mode) | NONE |
| no camera yet offers anything close to ideal features | |||||
