Focus Stacking With Helicon Remote
Focus Stacking With Helicon Remote
Helicon Focus is a Focus Stacking Software Progam that allow you combine multiple images of an 'object' taken at different focus points. Very useful for macro and close up photography. I have been using this software for a few years. I recently upgraded my annual licence to a lifetime licence and took the offer of adding 'Helicon Remote' to it. This is an app on my iPhone (Androide versions are available too).
This natty bit of software allows to to connect to your iPhone to the camera and control the focus point of the lens.
You set the aperture you want to work at and then pick the front focus point on the screen of your phone and then rear focus point. It then calculates the number of shots the camera should take to cover that focus distance.
I initially played with the app with a steel rule. I then raided the garden for a flower and took shot you see here.
Flower lit by a single LED matrix. I set the lens to f/4 and the software decided that I needed 13 images to stack.
Imported the resultant images into Lightroom and then exported the set of images to Helicon Focus.
I used the standard settings and stacked the images. Resultant file back into Lightroom for basic adjustments and cropping.
This software app works with Canon and Nikon Cameras I know, it may work with others. Having had an Olympus with in-camera focus stacking that works very well, when I switched back to my Canon System I did miss this facility.
My mirrorless Canon (EOS R) does not have a focus stacking function inbuilt into the camera even though the less expensive RP does. Canon have never updated the firmware for the EOS R. The two new mirrorless canons (6R and 5R) do have this function I believe.
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