I've been playing with my camera again! One frustration I have in photographing all my little trains is the shallow depth of field one always gets with n scale. So, today I made a small project of going the other way, and the result is the image above.
The locomotive is a Dapol LNER B1. I'm not really blown away with it's running properties but I'm reserving judgement till I've given it more of a chance. Right now major landscaping work is underway on the JaggyBahn and the track conditions are poor, so a full review is a long ways off. Anyhow, the image you see here is a stacked composite of 5 images, each taken with slightly different focus at a set aperture.
Full size image here.
Gear: Canon 60D, 100mm macro lens, F11, 1"3, 400 ISO, small tripod, Zerene Stacker software.
So obviously it's still not perfect, some areas are a bit soft and the dust (which was invisible to the naked eye) looks terrible. For my next attempt I'll go with perhaps 20 exposures and computer control to focus the lens.
(Second try) It amazes me when I go to look at my photos and see the enormous chunks of stuff on my loco's and layout!
ReplyDeleteI've heard of image stacking before and it intrigues me quite a bit, please share more!
Can you explain this image stackery you are doing? Is it like HDR but with different focus depth? How did you determine which focus ranges to use?
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteImage stacking is a technique that lets you get an in focus photo of a very small thing. What you do is take multiple pictures of your object with a macro lens, and in each you adjust only the focus. To do this you need your camera in full manual mode and then use software to make the focus adjustment ideally, rather then by hand, as your touching the camera at all will result in each image being less then identical. The software you use afterwards can line things up to compensate for this, but it's better if you start with better images.
Take a look at this, it will explain better then I: http://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker
My setup is my camera, a 100mm macro lens, a laptop to run the camera, constant lighting, and a stable tripod. The big disappointment is, as Jerry says, all the dust the camera picks up that's invisible to the eye. I think to get an attractive image some photoshoppery will be required as well.
PS: The blog and train project is not dead, sorry for the absence of updates, progress has been slow and my basement is cold!
James