Some garden stacks

[GardenersHelper]

These are from our garden yesterday and the day before. I used a Panasonic G9 with Olympus 60mm macro to capture 6K video post focus files and used Helicon Focus to extract and stack JPEGs from them and then finished off the images in Lightroom. I often work hand-held for botanical stuff but as an experiment I used a tripod to help steady the camera. I used it while keeping my hands on the camera, as you would use a monopod, and in fact for the last one only one leg of the tripod was on the ground because I had to work at a really awkward angle to reach over our tiny pond.

#1 Camellia bud just starting to open, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/320 sec, 59 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background

1414 0 2018_12_17 P1001032 G9+60 TPA PF59f F2.8 ISO400 1-320 B6,2+outerB50,5 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2 Camellia bud, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/250 sec, 78 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background

1414 2 2018_12_17 P1001058 G9+60 TPA PF78f F2.8 ISO400 1-250 C4+outerA21,9 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3 Magnolia buds, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/400 sec, 66 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background

1414 3 2018_12_17 P1001061 G9+60 TPA PF66f F2.8 ISO400 1-400 B16,4+outerA16,8 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4 Magnolia bud, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/250 sec, 39 frames stacked, single stack

1414 4 2018_12_17 P1001079 G9+60 TPA PF39f F2.8 ISO400 1-250 C,4 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5 Fern, f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/250 sec, 35 frames stacked, single stack

1414 6 2018_12_17 P1001098 G9+60 TPA PF35f F2.8 ISO400 1-250 B8,4 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6 Schizostylis, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/125 sec, 20 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background

1413 1 2018_12_15 P1000796 G9+60 TRA PF20f F2.8 ISO800 1-125 B19,3+outerA19,3 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#7 Hebe, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/30 sec, 30 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background

1413 3 2018_12_15 P1000820 G9+60 TRA PF30f F2.8 ISO800 1-30 C2+outerA9,4 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8 Hypericum seed pods, f/2.8, ISO 1600, 1/40 sec, 33 frames stacked, single stack

1413 5 2018_12_15 P1000834 G9+60 TRA PF33f F2.8 ISO1600 1-40 B9,4 LR7 1400h by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[Graham]

Hi Nick,
Nice to see you posting here again, I like this one #6 Schizostylis, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/125 sec, 20 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background,
Lovely colour and liking the water drops on it too.
But.......................as always all your shots are fab and the time and dedication you put into them is just amazing, And even more amazing is that you done these Handheld.

 

[GardenersHelper]

Hi Nick,
Nice to see you posting here again, I like this one #6 Schizostylis, f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/125 sec, 20 frames stacked, two stacks merged, one for the subject and one for the background,
Lovely colour and liking the water drops on it too.
But.......................as always all your shots are fab and the time and dedication you put into them is just amazing, And even more amazing is that you done these Handheld.

Thanks Graham. The Schizostylis is a lovely little plant. There is just the one of them, with only a handful of flowers, but every winter it is back and looking very bonny.

I think I will use the tripod a bit more. It wasn't as slow and restricting as I remembered it being when I last used it a year or three ago, although that was mainly with insects etc I think. For this session it didn't seem to take too long to set up for each shot and to my surprise I managed to reach all the flowers etc that caught my eye. I wasn't expecting that - I thought I would be taking the camera on and off the tripod to reach the ones in awkward positions. Perhaps I just got lucky with where the subjects were. Time will tell.

 

[davholla]

Very good, I think a good photographer takes a good photograph of an interesting subject. A great photographer takes a good photograph of a subject that is not obviously interesting, these are great in that the original is not that great.
How long did these take? BTW If you want winter colour Mahonica Japonica is great.

 

[GardenersHelper]

Very good, I think a good photographer takes a good photograph of an interesting subject. A great photographer takes a good photograph of a subject that is not obviously interesting, these are great in that the original is not that great.
How long did these take? BTW If you want winter colour Mahonica Japonica is great.

Thank you David. Perhaps you are little too kind with your compliments, but I appreciate the thought.

Yes, Mahonia is very pretty when its berries are out. We have two bushes, one in the front garden and one in the back garden, but they are past their best at the moment. That said, I haven't looked at them closely for I while so I might go and have a closer look. It is sometimes surprising what you can find.Thanks for the suggestion.

As to how long these took, not as long as you might think. The capture phase is particularly easy when using post-focus videos. Having decided on aperture/shutter speed/ISO it is very much point and shoot, and at 30 fps it is quick to execute. This is much faster and easier than with focus bracketing, where you have to make additional decisions about how many images to capture and what spacing to use between successive captures, and you also have to arrange the focusing so that it starts just in front of the nearest part of the scene. Focus bracketing also executes much slower, at around 4 to 5 frames per second on my cameras. And of course if you are taking the shots individually and moving the camera between shots or refocusing between shots then it is much slower again.

Post focus is fast enough that I can happily have half a dozen or more attempts at each subject in an attempt to get one where the breeze doesn't make life difficult. These eight were taken from two sessions. The first session lasted about an hour and a quarter and I captured 62 videos of 11 scenes (counting two angles on the same subject as two separate scenes). I ended up with 7 images. The second session lasted about an hour and I captured 84 videos of 16 scenes. I ended up with 7 images, but there were another 6 that stacked ok but I didn't think they looked nice.

Having done the captures, the file handling is also much easier and faster with post-focus. You have one video per capture, rather than tens of individual images, which when multiplied by several attempts per scene and a number of scenes per session can mount up to more files than I really want to deal with.

The stacking can be fairly straightforward. I have a quick look at the videos of a scene and pick one that looks most hopeful in terms of hand-shake, subject movement and composition (you can only really tell how the composition worked out after doing a stack). I drag the video into Helicon Focus which automatically extracts JPEGs, I then pick which of the JPEGs to use for the stack and what method of stacking to use and what parameters to use for the stack. What happens next can range from very quick and easy (the stack works with my first attempt) to somewhat complicated, although generally still quite fast (using a combination of two stacks, or a stack and individual images). I have learnt to give up when I realise that it isn't going to work without more effort than I can be bothered to put into it, and if it needs that much effort it may well turn out not good enough that I would want to use it anyway. I have learnt to let go and simply enjoy the ones that work and not regret the ones that don't.

The "finishing off" processing in Lightroom is much the same as for any other images, although in some cases it is particularly easy, amounting to no more than cropping (or not even that).