Landscapes

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Photomagica
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Joined: 06.11.2006 03:47
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Landscapes

Post by Photomagica »

I'm mainly interested in using Helicon Focus with landscape images. I haven't seen many landscape images in this forum so I thought that other users and prospective users would enjoy my experience making this image.

The originals were made with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f4 L lens, with the lens set at f14. There were five images in the stack. Helicon Focus worked on the original RAW CR2 files.

Helicon focus did a very good job of merging the stack. The flowers were moving in the wind and the effective focal length of the lens changed with the focal distance. Helicon Focus did not fully compensate for these issues, however the brushes tool made it easy to remove any artifacts. It took about an hour to do artifact removal on the rather complex image.

The only thing I would do differently next time is to process the RAW images first. The exposure is a little hot, damaging the highlight detail in the light flowers. This could have been easily corrected in Adobe Bridge.

The images were made this summer (2006) in an alpine meadow high above Floe Lake, in Kootenay National Park, Canadian Rockies.
Attachments
Floe Flowers Strip.jpg
The small JPEG permitted by the forum did not really show what Helicon Focus can do so I cropped this strip from the middle of the image.
(224.27 KiB) Downloaded 2812 times
Floe Flowers_R=8_S=4.jpg
Floe Flowers_R=8_S=4.jpg (250.39 KiB) Viewed 7549 times
Bill Peters
Dan Kozub
Posts: 355
Joined: 24.03.2004 18:14

Post by Dan Kozub »

Bill,

Thanks for this example. Many users asked me if Helicon Focus can be used for landscape photography.

Danylo
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Ariel
Posts: 115
Joined: 26.10.2006 06:05

Post by Ariel »

What happens if you're shooting a landscape with water and there are waves? Or if in one shot, a flower is leaning differently than in another shot? Can Helicon Focus detect these differences and correct for them? That would be really cool and the photo would look sharper/cleaner!
Photomagica
Posts: 2
Joined: 06.11.2006 03:47
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Subject Motion

Post by Photomagica »

In the example above the flowers were moving in the wind. In some cases the motion from image to image exceeded the diameter of the flower. Helicon Focus did not compensate for this automatically. The brush tools provided a very easy way to correct for motion among the images in the stack. I expect the same would be the case for moving water.

In some cases I can imagine that NOT correcting for motion might be an interesting artisting effect.

I urge users of Helicon Focus to try it on non-macro subjects. It is a delightful and effective tool.
Bill Peters
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