a solution walkthru for some standard problems

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wsi
Posts: 27
Joined: 12.05.2012 14:23

a solution walkthru for some standard problems

Post by wsi »

Would it be possible (or perhaps I have just missed it on the forum) to get some short videos walking us through fixing standard problems with focus stacking?
It seems like halos of some form are a common problem for most of us because of parallax. I have spent many hours playing with combinations to Radius and smoothing to try to find minimal halos so the retouching is minimal as well.
In some cases my flower images get an effect like they are melting plastic. I don't understand what causes this effect so I can't really prevent it. I think it has something to do with smoothing.
Understanding the relationship between radius and smoothing would help me a lot with flower photographs.

I use the Cognisys Stackshot system with extended macro rail
Helicon Focus of course
I do not have Helicon Remote - I am not sure how that would help solve halo issues but I am open to suggestions.
Nikon gear. Typically using a 60 mm micro or a 105mm micro on as D800E. 10 to 15 sec exposures f8 to f13
Flash units are Elinchrome Quadra RX softboxes. Not Profoto but decent I think. Perhaps the flash units are causing light variations?

if you look at http://inglesphoto.com in the abstracts gallery you can see a few samples of the melting or plastic flower look I mentioned above.

I have learned a lot in this forum but I am certainly still learning as you can see from the stack of the vanda orchid or cymbidium I uploaded to the ftp site. I am trying to work on cymbidium orchid but halos are driving me crazy.
Thanks.
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Stas Yatsenko
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Joined: 06.05.2009 14:05
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Re: a solution walkthru for some standard problems

Post by Stas Yatsenko »

Wonderful gallery! There are two main reasons for halos. One reason is optical - unfocused foreground object masks part of focused object in the background. There is nothing the program can do about it because visual information is not available. To minimize this effect you should use smaller aperture.


The second reason is that program sometimes takes information from the wrong source image. In this case you can correct final image with retouching brush, taking information from correct source image. In this case you should try larger radius. We are preparing new help page about setting optimal radius. We will publish it at our site soon.
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