Landscape Photography and CoC

[hiroshisugi]

I I have began to use focus bracketing for my landscape photography to increase the depth of field. So far I have only used only manual focus lenses to accurately adjust the focus manually via DoF tables. Of course, it would be fantastic if one could use Helicon Remote to use AF lenses for this purpose. I downloaded the trial version but I don't understand what the software is doing and how it calculates the focus step sizes. For example, I want to focus from 1 m to infinity using a 28 mm lens at f8. For my print size and camera I use a circle of confusion (CoC) of 0.019 mm. Using a DoF table I would normally take 3-4 exposures. How can I achieve this with Helicon Remote? What are the step sizes that Helicon Remote calculates? Is there any way that I can input the CoC into Helicon Remote?
Obviously, Helicon Remote would become extremely useful, if it were to compute and execute accurately the large number of focusing steps it would take, e.g., to focus from 1m to infinity with a 35 mm lens at f7.1 and a CoC of 0.0079. These type of settings will be needed for the latest high resolution DSLRs (Nikon D800) for large printouts.

[Stas Yatsenko]

Thanks for your questions. Helicon Remote operates in focusing steps which are roughly equivalent to rotating focusing ring by some angle. It does not know nothing about distance to the object. The good thing about it is that DOF in focusing steps is roughly the same for macro range and close to infinity. So internal DOF calculator can estimate DOF quite correctly based on aperture and focal distance. You are also welcome to fine tune it by testing it with your lens and camera. After this you can rely on DOF calculator when estimating number of steps.