 Focus stacking with the Leaf AFi and Helicon Focus
These new tools at our disposal allow us to spend more time taking pictures and leaving the wizardry for the software. There are mathematicians with many more degrees than I have, computing the perfect algorithms to replace tasks that would have taken forever before the digital revolution hit photography.
One of the biggest challenges facing photographers shooting with digital cameras is to learn to the change the way we think. We would look at our subject and instinctively know what could be photographed, what would be sharp, what would be beyond the depth of field and what highlights or shadows would likely be lost. Today’s equipment, combined with new software, allows photographers to accomplish what was seen as virtually impossible just a few years ago.
 Left - composite image, right - one slice of the series
There are a number of programs that can be used, such as CombineZM (Windows), an open source software package, or PhotoAcute Studio (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) from Almalence. There are several plugins, Extended Depth of Field and Stack Focuser for ImageJ . ImageJ, if you haven't already tried it, is a public domain, Java-based image processing program developed at the National Institutes of Health. ImageJ was designed with an open architecture that provides extensibility via Java plugins and recordable macros. Helicon Focus (www.heliconsoft.com - Windows and Mac OS X) is a well developed program from Helicon Soft Ltd. that allows users to use a variety of source files including different RAW formats. The genius behind Helicon Focus is Danylo Kozub, a professor of economics with a passion for photography. He and Vitaly Khmelik update the program every few months.
 Leaf AFi medium format digital camera  Left: Combined image, Right: last image in series Once focus bracketing is selected from the camera’s menu, you have the choice of shooting, 3, 5, 7 or 9 frames. After an aperture is selected and the focus is set for the “master” shot, and the camera triggered, the lens automatically focuses to take a series of photos. The 1st shot makes the lens focus with the center of the depth of field at the point where the edge of the depth of field was for the “master” shot. The last shot of the series has the center of the depth of field where the end of the depth of field was in the “master” shot. All the other shots are equally spaced in between those two shots with the middle shot being the master shot. It sounds complicated but it is very easy to accomplish with the AFi. The camera’s controls are easy to set and it takes just a few minutes for new photographers to find their way around the camera.
Helicon Focus can’t read the MOS files from the AFi right now, but Danylo told me they are working on it. I converted my RAW files to TIF using the powerful Leaf Capture 11.1 software that Leaf provides for free. I saved the TIFs to a separate folder on my desktop and from within Helicon Focus, opened the folder containing my 9 TIF files. The graphic user interface is uncomplicated for such a powerful program. I clicked RUN and a few minutes later I was looking at a new file composed of all 9 of my TIFs.
The AFi 7’s 33 megapixel images ordinarily jump out at you on their own but when combined with Helicon Focus they are unbelievably impressive. What seemed impossible a few years ago is now accomplished in minutes thanks to the Leaf AFi camera and Helicon Focus software and the best part – you don’t have to get dirty cleaning up a darkroom. |
