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Focus merge/stack - now do it all on your iPad


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There’s an iOS camera app, CameraPixels, that now does focus bracketing. So now you can shoot and process a focus stack/merge photo without leaving your iPad.

 

With foreground in focus:

6B671A84-A47B-4014-B2F3-8D32362A7237.thumb.jpeg.2ae11252e356a98d488110f638446b7b.jpeg

 

With background in focus:

D372C628-9547-467B-83AF-5D97355B0DBC.thumb.jpeg.ed7f530ba2c327a7024879ce7d162fb0.jpeg

 

After AP's focus merge magic with 6 bracketed photos, all in focus:

712D62D2-62B8-4AD4-9F0D-67C3CB62C9E6.thumb.jpeg.eff3c205bf14ff41e4c518e8fc0d4f4e.jpeg

 

CameraPixels has a number, 0.0 to 1.0, that specifies the focus distance. To shoot the photos in focus bracket mode, you select the start and end focus number, plus the number of photos to take. So you need to experiment first with manual focusing to see what start and finish numbers are right.

 

For this photo, I took 10 photos, starting at focus 0.0 and ending at 0.6. I deleted 4 photos that didn’t look much different from the ones on either side, then dragged them into AP. Magic.

Stan

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  • 1 year later...

If this is all the better one can do it's a wonder anyone would purchase CameraPixels and Affinity Photo for the purpose of obtaining deep depth of field images. Focus bracketing in CameraPixels is an absolute wonder, and focus aligning and merging in Affinity Photo is straight forward, although it's not well enough publicized. The first image is a wild violet about one cm across and taken on an iPhone XR back camera and Moment macro lens. The second image, although not apparently detailed at first glance, is an amazing 50X+ image of tiny pollen particles taken with an iPhone XR back camera and Moment macro lens. #shotonmoment.

TinyBlueViolet.jpg

geranium6cropped4.jpg

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I have now installed Open Camera on my Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablet. Unfortunately it does not include Focus Bracketing, which is a standard part of Open Camera. I suspect that I do not have the Camera2 API, despite running Android 7.1.

John

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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8 hours ago, John Rostron said:

I suspect that I do not have the Camera2 API, despite running Android 7.1.

Are you able to capture RAW? If so then according to Open Camera Help guide Camera2 API is enabled.

The lack of focus bracketing could be to do with the age of your tablet? I have the most recent Android OS update (Android 9) for my Galaxy S8 however, for example, I'm only able to obtain a three exposure bracket (even though I have five exposures checked). The S8 is of course getting on in age now (in digital terms).

Have you tried the Dynamic Range Optimisation (DRO) mode? I've just started experimenting with it—it looks quite useful for both flat and high contrast lighting situations (looks more natural than HDR).

Peter 

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@PedroOfOz, I ran Camera2 Probe on my tablet and it labelled my Camera2 API as Legacy!

The options for saving in Open Camera only lists jpeg, no raw or dng. It does, however offer exposure bracketing. I tried that yesterday, but I have not yet looked at the output in detail.

Looking on the web, I get the impression that many Android tablets, even those with Android 7, could support Camera2 API but have not actually implemented it. Pity really. I cannot see me getting a new tablet, just to run this. I may look again at using a Lua script on my Canon Powershot.

John

 

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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20 hours ago, John Rostron said:

I cannot see me getting a new tablet, just to run this.

Yeah, that's the downside of our digital world ... all so disposable within a short period of time.

Unlike film! The 5x7 inch mahogany and brass sheet film view camera I used for many years was made in 1906 (now in retirement and owned by a collector) :)   

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4 hours ago, John Rostron said:

It does, however offer exposure bracketing. I tried that yesterday, but I have not yet looked at the output in detail.

@PedroOfOz, I have now looked at the HDR results (processed in Affinity). I took four trios, ostensibly focussed at different distances. The HDR output looked fine, but I got the impression that it had ignored the focus distances

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has successfully used the Camera2 API on an Android tablet. My current tablet would now cost me round £180 and I would not want to exceed that sort of figure.

John11-

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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21 hours ago, John Rostron said:

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has successfully used the Camera2 API on an Android tablet. My current tablet would now cost me round £180 and I would not want to exceed that sort of figure.

Hello John, Your post may get lost here (?)

Presumably there's a truck load of smartphone/tablet users in the forum ... perhaps you should start a new thread on this subject (?)

My apology to the OP as my posts have moved beyond the intended :)  

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