Afternoon, in the garden, late February

GardenersHelper

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Nick
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Lovely colours in these shots Nick, 3 & 4 are my favs.
 
Lovely colours in these shots Nick, 3 & 4 are my favs.
Very nice Nick! Didn't notice this until after I messaged you.

Thanks Graham, Danny, Mike. :)

Any reason you used jpegs from the video to stack rather than focus bracket?

Yes, two reasons.

The 30 frames per second capture rate of post focus video is much more suitable for working hand-held than the 4.5 frames per second with focus bracketing. (I have an on/off, mainly off, relationship with my tripod. I have a very good, light, highly flexible tripod, but it really does cramp my style as far as capture speed and flexibility goes. So despite the disadvantages I generally work hand-held). As an example of capture duration, for a 90-image stack (which is real world, see below) I have to keep the camera from wandering around too much for around 3 seconds when using video (the capture is often longer than that, but it is only the period while the images that will end up being stacked are captured that matters). Using focus bracketing that would be 18 seconds. It is much more difficult to maintain framing hand-held for that length of time. Also, it is often breezy here, so I'm trying fit captures within brief lulls in the breeze when things aren't moving around so much. I have much more chance of completing the stacking-relevant part of the capture with a six times shorter capture period.

Also, handling one video file per "take" makes for much easier file handling than having multiple images files for each take. For example, the posted images were stacks of from 23 to 76 JPEGs, and the maximum number of frames (JPEGs) for one of the keepers from that day's shooting was 99 frames. And I have used more than that (201 is the current maximum). Then multiply that by the number of subjects and the number of takes for each subject (I have learnt the hard way to take several takes for each framing of each subject, the more so when it is breezy.)

For the eight posted images, the average number of images per stack was around 40. At that rate for 235 takes I would need to manage around 10,000 images, compared to 235 videos.

Not only does focus bracketing multiply the number of files to be handled, but also the overall time taken to do the captures of a particular subject, for example spending over a quarter of an hour capturing images of a subject compared to the three minutes it would take with post focus. For the number of subjects I want to cover in a session that is highly significant.

Incidentally, related to your message, in terms of image quality I'm finding jpegs from 6K video fine for stacking. Unlike 4K video with the G80, which produces 8mpix JPEGs, 6K video with the G9 produces 18mpix JPEGs, which is more than the 16mpix of a full size G80 image. With the G9 I use a very flat camera profile, Cinelike D (not available on the G80), and coupled with turning the noise reduction and the sharpening right down gives me a lot of flexibility with post processing.

JPEG has a more limited dynamic range, and I work with high contrast/high dynamic range scenes quite a lot (I like the effects I can get with them). But as with raw I expose to protect highlights and so what the lesser dynamic range of the JPEG captures means is that shadows are going to be noisier, especially when raised. That means I sometimes do more involved noise reduction than would be the case with raw. However, the flat Cinelike D profile gives coverage of a higher dynamic range than normal JPEG profiles, so all in all I don't think there is much disadvantage (for me) in using JPEG. YMMV of course.

As to white balance, another issue with JPEG, I have taken to setting the camera white balance from a grey card for each scene. The G9 make this very easy to do. I think that helps a lot with the colours I am getting.
 
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Very good shots as is usual from you, Nick, especially as they were taken on a breezy day.
Thankyou for the description and reply to dibbled dobbler, it is very interesting.
I have not tried video to obtain suitable stacking images, but it seems to work well for you. When I get some time I may have a go.
 
Hi Nick.

Some great information there thanks again! I have a lot to learn about focus bracketing I can see - I had fondly imagined firing off say 10 frames at 1/200 each and the whole thing only taking 1/20 of a second but I guess this is not the way it works. I also work hand held basically 100% of the time and am keen to get a lighter setup - so shooting with no flash and a wider aperture then focus stacking seems like a good option... I'm off to watch some videos to try and get a better idea how it works :)
 
Very good shots as is usual from you, Nick, especially as they were taken on a breezy day.
Thankyou for the description and reply to dibbled dobbler, it is very interesting.
I have not tried video to obtain suitable stacking images, but it seems to work well for you. When I get some time I may have a go.

Thanks Andrew.

It may be worthwhile (and certainly should be interesting and hopefully fun) to have a go at using video to capture images for stacking, but I think you should be cautious about drawing conclusions from what I've been up to recently. One thing is that I'm using a camera that does the focusing for me. All I have to do is point the camera at the subject, press the shutter button and hold the camera fairly still while the camera captures the video. I suspect that only Panasonic cameras can do this at the moment. It is possible to use normal video, keep the focus fixed and move the camera towards the subject (or away from it) while the video is being captured. I have never tried it but I did read a while ago of someone doing it.
 
Hi Nick.

Some great information there thanks again! I have a lot to learn about focus bracketing I can see - I had fondly imagined firing off say 10 frames at 1/200 each and the whole thing only taking 1/20 of a second but I guess this is not the way it works. I also work hand held basically 100% of the time and am keen to get a lighter setup - so shooting with no flash and a wider aperture then focus stacking seems like a good option... I'm off to watch some videos to try and get a better idea how it works :)

Yes, even using video it would be slower than you envisaged.

Being able to use a larger aperture and get shutter speeds fast enough for hand-holding is a definite plus. I use f/2.8 all the time. That is not optimal in terms of image quality with the Olympus 60mm macro, but I find it is plenty sharp enough for my purposes when wide open at f/2.8 and I suspect any image quality advantage from using a larger aperture would be slight when compared with the differences from one take to another when working hand-held (and of course for a given ISO shutter speeds slow down as aperture decreases, which can be bad news for hand-holding depending on the ambient light level).

The stacking itself can be a bit complicated. I think this probably depends on the subject matter. Apart from a couple of experiments a while ago, I have not used stacking for invertebrates. I know it is possible to get terrific results for invertebrates, for example look at this photographer's invertebrate stacks. He uses post focus a lot with Panasonic cameras and an Olympus 60mm macro, with extension tubes and/or a Raynox 250 depending on the magnification. I believe he works hand-held. He does use an LED light a lot of the time for invertebrates though.

I think the stacking might often be easier for invertebrates than botanical subjects. The trouble with botanical subjects is that there are often things you want in focus that are some distance from one another but overlap, and you get difficult to deal with halos around the edge of the nearer one. The further they are apart (relative to the scale of the scene) the wider the halos, and in botanical scenes parts that you want in focus can be quite large distances apart. It has taken me some time to get to grips with stacking botanical subjects. (I'm still very much working on it.)
 
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