Vertical Shift Panorama with Focus Stacking (Zork PSA on Nikon D800E)
Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 55mm f/2.8N mounted on Panorama Shift adapter from Zork. Taken at ISO 100, 1/800 sec at f/5.6. For more information on the Zork adapter and what it does, check my extensive explanations at
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8604568576/in/photostream
This vertical Panorama is made from 2 Horizontal pictures. each horizontal picture is a composite made from focus stacking one photo focused on the lamp and another one focused on the church. Focus stacking and stiching was accomplished using Adobe Photoshop CS6. The overall resulting picture is the equivalent of a 56 Mpixel camera and has almost unlimited depth of field (from 2 meters to infinity).
Normally, extended depth of field - beyond the traditional closing of the aperture which has its limit due to diffraction beyond f/8 on D800E - is acheived with tilting the lens plane forward using a Tilt adapter. or a T&S lens called PC-E lens in Nikon portfolio. Well the same result can be achieved with a regular lens and focus stacking; it is not just for macro applications - which is the most popular use of focus stacking - but also for Panormas where we want for example that the picture to be focused from the flower in the foreground (2 meters away) to the mountain at infinity , for example.
I intend to use more and more this function of Photoshop ("File/Automate/Photomerge") that does both Panorama stitching and focus stacking automatically (it recognizes the content of the loaded files). The workflow under lightroom is easy as well:
- For Panorma stitching: select the 2-3 photos to be stitched, right click and select "Edit in/Merge to Panorma in Photoshop". Once photoshop is open, it is self explanatory.
- For Focus stacking: select the several pictures to be focus stacked, right click and select "Editin/Open as layers in Photoshop". Once Photoshop is open with all the photos as inidividual layers, highlight all the layers then select "Edit/Auto-Align Layers" then "Edit/Auto-Blend Layers". Once the work is done select all the layers with built in masks created automatocally, then do "Layers/Flatten Layers". Finally you can save the resulting image as a JPEG or TIFF as you wish and reimport it in Lightroom through the normal "File/import photos and Video" menu of Lightroom 4.
If you wish to combine Panorama stitching and Focus stacking and you do not have have specialized software like PTGui or Autopano, you can use Photoshop as I described above as long as you do not have multiple rows/columns to stitch. The results are really excellent. Just remember to do each action separately:
- first you do the focus stacking function to create the final images to be stitched
- then you use the created stacked images with the "Merge in Panorama" function to create the horizontal or vertical Panorama final image with huge depth of field.
I posted only a scale down 2MB jpeg file on flickr and cannot appreciate fully the breathtaking resolution and depth of field of the composite I created. However you can still see the details on the clock and on the lamp when viewing this photo at its maximum size in flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8603934110/sizes/o/in/photost...
The purpose of using a medium format lens on a 35mm DSLR is to use make use of the larger diameter of the medium format lens and shift it in any desired direction compared to the sensor of the 35mm camera in order to stitch the several images into a higher resolution file.
This is made possible because the 75mm diagonal of a 645 medium format lens gives 32mm of additional space (shift) compared to the 43mm diagonal of a 35mm format camera sensor. This is why we can take 3 photos shifted (one with no shit, one shifted left, and one shifted right) and still be within the diameter of the medium format lens. Using this technique the stitching is quasi perfect with no need to crop due to loss of coverage in the upper or lower section of the image, usually created by a a curvy horizon when panning/rotating with a non perfect leveling.
Vertical Shift Panorama with Focus Stacking (Zork PSA on Nikon D800E)
Nikon D800E with lens Mamiya 55mm f/2.8N mounted on Panorama Shift adapter from Zork. Taken at ISO 100, 1/800 sec at f/5.6. For more information on the Zork adapter and what it does, check my extensive explanations at
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8604568576/in/photostream
This vertical Panorama is made from 2 Horizontal pictures. each horizontal picture is a composite made from focus stacking one photo focused on the lamp and another one focused on the church. Focus stacking and stiching was accomplished using Adobe Photoshop CS6. The overall resulting picture is the equivalent of a 56 Mpixel camera and has almost unlimited depth of field (from 2 meters to infinity).
Normally, extended depth of field - beyond the traditional closing of the aperture which has its limit due to diffraction beyond f/8 on D800E - is acheived with tilting the lens plane forward using a Tilt adapter. or a T&S lens called PC-E lens in Nikon portfolio. Well the same result can be achieved with a regular lens and focus stacking; it is not just for macro applications - which is the most popular use of focus stacking - but also for Panormas where we want for example that the picture to be focused from the flower in the foreground (2 meters away) to the mountain at infinity , for example.
I intend to use more and more this function of Photoshop ("File/Automate/Photomerge") that does both Panorama stitching and focus stacking automatically (it recognizes the content of the loaded files). The workflow under lightroom is easy as well:
- For Panorma stitching: select the 2-3 photos to be stitched, right click and select "Edit in/Merge to Panorma in Photoshop". Once photoshop is open, it is self explanatory.
- For Focus stacking: select the several pictures to be focus stacked, right click and select "Editin/Open as layers in Photoshop". Once Photoshop is open with all the photos as inidividual layers, highlight all the layers then select "Edit/Auto-Align Layers" then "Edit/Auto-Blend Layers". Once the work is done select all the layers with built in masks created automatocally, then do "Layers/Flatten Layers". Finally you can save the resulting image as a JPEG or TIFF as you wish and reimport it in Lightroom through the normal "File/import photos and Video" menu of Lightroom 4.
If you wish to combine Panorama stitching and Focus stacking and you do not have have specialized software like PTGui or Autopano, you can use Photoshop as I described above as long as you do not have multiple rows/columns to stitch. The results are really excellent. Just remember to do each action separately:
- first you do the focus stacking function to create the final images to be stitched
- then you use the created stacked images with the "Merge in Panorama" function to create the horizontal or vertical Panorama final image with huge depth of field.
I posted only a scale down 2MB jpeg file on flickr and cannot appreciate fully the breathtaking resolution and depth of field of the composite I created. However you can still see the details on the clock and on the lamp when viewing this photo at its maximum size in flickr:
www.flickr.com/photos/episa/8603934110/sizes/o/in/photost...
The purpose of using a medium format lens on a 35mm DSLR is to use make use of the larger diameter of the medium format lens and shift it in any desired direction compared to the sensor of the 35mm camera in order to stitch the several images into a higher resolution file.
This is made possible because the 75mm diagonal of a 645 medium format lens gives 32mm of additional space (shift) compared to the 43mm diagonal of a 35mm format camera sensor. This is why we can take 3 photos shifted (one with no shit, one shifted left, and one shifted right) and still be within the diameter of the medium format lens. Using this technique the stitching is quasi perfect with no need to crop due to loss of coverage in the upper or lower section of the image, usually created by a a curvy horizon when panning/rotating with a non perfect leveling.