Helicon Soft Forum

Hi,

Sometimes when you do panorama, you want to use focus stacking. But, as I understand, the process can be time consuming currently.

Here's my proposed simple feature to make it much more efficient.

You just need to create a looping capture mode with a delay, and 2 beeps (removable) between each loop.

User would select point A and B as usual. But he will check the loop mode, which would ask for a delay between loops (can be 0 for some reason), and beep 1 and 2 or not.

Then the user would frame the first picture, and press the start loop mode.
at each loop A/B focus would go, beep 1 if checked would signal end of this focus stacking, then delay will trigger. During that delay user will frame next picture. The second beep, beep 2 (actually a sequences of beep like timer mode) warns for the end on the delay and then loop 2 goes focus stacking A/B…

Etc. The process continues till the user doesn't stop it.

IMPORTANT : One can wonder why, instead of a forever loop, we don't ask for a number of picture to be taken. For 2 reasons :

- It would take more time to prepare the shots, as the user would need to pre frame each frame count them, and then will need when doing the actual capture, to repeat that framing precisely or he will risk to make some gaps.
On the contrary with forever loops the user can slice the panorama while making it. He can even go back if needed

- When doing panorama, during each frame some unpredictable things can go wrong. An animal / human / plane can pass by. So if unwanted, the user will need to redo the frame he's capturing. With the forever loop, he just as to wait the next loop

a pause button could be a good thing, because if an old man passes by, he can be quiet long…

So with those simples modification : forever looping, delay, beeps, stop and pause button we'l have a much more efficient wy to capture focus stacked panoramas.

Those feature will be also useful for many other use. Even without panning, a fixed capture, for instance time-lapse would need it.

P.S : of course that would need to work also with the much needed and waited HDR and Focus stacking function.

Yes, very interesting idea. Currently when the camera finishes the stack, it returns to the starting position (A), so all you need to do is to start the stack again and again after framing new part of the panorama. You suggest that the stack is started automatically after a delay. That frees the hands, true, but adds time pressure when framing.


I think the ideal solution would be ability to start the stack from the camera while looking into viewfinder and framing the picture. I am not sure if this is possible, we will discuss this internally.

The ideal solution may be difficult to accomplish and will work on some camera and not others. But why not. But don't delay the simple solution for the ideal one.
Release the simple one, then ideal

The time pressure is not an hindrance, because you don't need to be extra precise to frame the slices. I do it hand held, takes 1 or 2 seconds tops, on tripod maybe 3 seconds. So just allow that delay to be settable. And the reward is much much greater than the cost time pressure is nothing compared to the huge productivity boost.

The ideal ideal solution would be to trigger the next stack upon shutter real ease.

But I'm sure you can't listen to the shutter release, can you ?
If you can then I've a truck load of new ideas