Focus Merge question

[Kim Holst]

I've tried a couple of times to stack Focus Bracketing bursts shot with my macro lens (Olympus 60/2.8 macro)

 

Unlike the dedicated focus stacking applications I've tried and used, I can't find the option to compensate for zooming in Affinity Photo.

 

The macro lens has what I imagine as build in "extension tubes", meaning I think optics are being moved when going from general magnification towards 1:1 magnification. It changes the FoV, "zooms".

 

So I had to give up in Affinity and use another app instead.

 

I'm wondering if it's meant to be added in a coming update version?

[James Ritson]

Hi Kim, I shoot with the same lens and I haven't had any issues (the video tutorial content was shot with the 60mm Macro too). Photo should compensate for the focus breathing when aligning the images - you'll end up with blurred borders but you just crop those out of the final image.

 

Can you give more detail about what's going wrong?

[Kim Holst]

Thank you James -

 

Yes, the blurred borders.

Now that you tell me it's obvious I should need to crop them away.

Like the in-cam Focus Stacking of my em1 does.

Think I read it crops to 70%.

What I will do is to make a "test" where I compare the in-cam stacked final image with the Affinity merged image of the same 8 burst-images.

 

I think I also had some issues with metal things not being sharp in the merged image.

As if reflecting light on the out of focus images became dominant.

I'll try to show examples of that too.

 

 

It may take some days before I get to it, as I'm away on work a lot these days, but I'll come back here and sum up.

 

Thanks

[Krustysimplex]

Focus stacking apps tend to have trouble distinguishing between low-contrast, in-focus renderings in one layer and and higher-contrast, out-of-focus renderings in other layers. That's why the depth retouching tools in Zerene Stacker and the professional version of Helicon Focus are so useful. I almost always have to use this function to fix specular highlights in photographs of metallic objects.

[Kim Holst]

Thanks Krusty :-)

I will have that in mind.

There is a tutorial that to some extend deals with that.

On the Facebook Affinity Photo tutorials group.

I'm just used to not having these issues when I use my in-cam Focus Stacking where I never noticed it,

but perhaps because I didn't do shooting where it would have been a problem in computer stacking/merging.

[Kim Holst]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qrtRfNURrhU&feature=youtu.be