Helicon Soft Forum

Hi,
I try to use helicon for optical inspections of circuit boards. Therefore I need to take several pictures with high depth of field. This I need to repeat for similar circuit boards

Now to my questions:

• Unlike shown in the YouTube tutorials I don’t have an autofocus Butten in the software.

• I can’t click on the live you image in order to set the focus there. I always need to go threw the arrows, which is really annoying and take to much time

• Is it somehow possible to save the current focus settings and if you open the software next time to load this setting and start the pictures

Best regards

Alexander

Hi Alexander,

1. The autofocus command is not currently available for Sony cameras, sorry. The way it's implemented in the A7 III remote control protocol makes it very difficult to integrate into our software, and it's also low precision with regards to being able to select the specific point you want to autofocus at.
2. Zoom is also not available, but it only enlarges the image to make it easier to see which parts are in focus, nothing more. You can't set focus via this feature.
   You can set the first point whichever way you want (move the camera, rotate the focusing ring by hand etc.), but then you must navigate to the second point using the focus stepping buttons (<<< / >>>).
   You can go to the Helicon Remote preferences - Sony, and set the "pause between focusing steps" to 80 ms to make it faster. Most lenses are quick enough for this.
3. There is no feedback from the camera to the software on what the position of the focus is. It's impossible to move the lens to a specific focus position, or to check that the focus is where you expect it to be. But if that's not a problem for you, then a focus stack is just 2 numbers: "Shots" and "Interval". You can un-tick the "Auto" checkbox and enter the interval manually, it will be remembered. Then you can enter the number of shots, and that many shots will be taken with the "interval" steps between them, from whatever the current focus position is.