Helicon Soft Forum

Hi,

Just joined this forum with a few questions. I do product photography (among other types) and for my own work as well as consulting clients for on-site product photography setups, my recommendation had been Photoshop's built-in focus stacking feature. It is great that your product can work with Lightroom for a lighter-weight workflow, and when I discovered that HeliconRemote can drive a stepper motor, that was just awesome!

Can Helicon Remote control two stepper motors? A couple of uses:
1) Stepper 1 controls the focusing rail to get a focus-bracketed set of images; from one focus-stacked set to the next, Stepper 2 controls the rotation of the table, in order to obtain a series of such focus-stacked images, with the intention of putting them together to make a 1080p, 4K or 6K video
2) Stepper 1 controls the focusing rail to get a focus-bracketed set of images; on a zoom macro lens with a follow-focus mechanism geared up to the zoom ring, Stepper 2 nudges the zoom setting a bit so the overall framing remains consistent throughout the focus-bracketing process.

Cordially,
Sasha
http://www.facebook.com/KarasevStudio

Helicon Remote can control only one stepper. I will check with the developer how difficult is to support second stepper. I suspect that not many people are ready to make do-it-yourself setups like you described.

Thanks Stas, much appreciated. Insofar as use case (1), this is really nothing more than implementing both of the standard use cases you already mention, but at the same time. So if you guys could enable anywhere between 2 and 4 steppers it would cover any need. As far as stepper coordination, there are just two ways: (a) "slave" stepper moves to the next position when the stepper assigned as its "master" moves to its next position, and (b) for each move "master" makes, "slave" completes a set of moves (with camera triggered each time) and goes back to original position for the next "master" move to again execute the sequence. If you "chain" the masters you really gain flexibility in software to enable bracketing anything at all even light position etc.

I was also wondering if SONY NEX7 can be triggered by the software via USB (no need for LiveView as it has HDMI output) in conjunction with operating the stepper. That specific camera's advantage is in an APC-C sensor with a very weak anti-aliasing filter (due to 24MP) and availability of tilt adapters allowing to not just use many other systems' lenses, but tilt them as well, reducing the number of focus stacked images that need to be taken. A couple of relevant links:

http://dslrsoftware.com/tethered_shoot_ ... indows.php (so someone is doing it apparently)

http://www.creativelive.com/blog/shooti ... ightroom-3 (SONY's own software - perhaps use http://www.usblyzer.com/software-usb-pr ... t-work.htm or http://www.everstrike.com/usb-monitor/ or http://www.hhdsoftware.com/usb-monitor/features or http://www.fabulatech.com/usb-monitor-pro.html to get the protocol specifics)

Thanks

There is not much hope for Sony cameras. DSLR line supports limited number of remote operations but no live view image or control over focusing. Other lines seem not to have even those abilities.

Multiple steppers - we added this task to our wish list but no exact plans so far.