Pitcher Plant

[Black Pearl]

Its a bit dull and miserable outside so I got out the D300s, shoved my 60mm Micro on the front, plonked it on my Manfrotto, wired it to the iMac and had a play with HeliconRemote.

The result - 35 NEF files tweaked slightly in Lightroom then stacked in HeliconFocus before a quick finish in Photoshop CC.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[bnnrcn]

Very nice colors

[joebranko]

Nice detail!

[FrankMi]

Excellent colour and detail!

[IzzieK]

Very nice. I like the lines very much.

[FrankMi]

Hi Robin,

your excellent image and mentioning HeliconRemote got me to looking it up on the internet. Looks interesting! Apparently it will work for some models of Nikon as well as Canon. My D3100 doesn't appear to be on their list so if I wanted to pursue using this to control focus stacking I'll likely need another camera. I currently shoot the stack manually so before I go with Helicon and possible need to get a different camera, what are your thoughts on Helicon, or related software to do automated focus stacking?

In particular, does HelconRemote work well? Do you have any recommendations on how to configure it? For example, does it work with the Nikon ML-L3 wireless remote? I see that you are using an I-Mac but the video shows Android. Perhaps both, or a different version? Maybe it would work with an I-Pad? I'm not having much luck getting answers on-line but then I may not be using the best search parameters.

Any thoughts you have would be appreciated.

[Black Pearl]

There are two main parts to Helicon:

HeliconRemote - which is the bit that can control the camera and allow you to preset the near/far points then it sorts out how many slices are needed and sets about taking them. I've only ever seen it used with a USB cable and only ever with a computer not wirelessly or with an iPad. It might be Android compatible though not sure how that would work if I'm honest as a decent stack can end up being 100+ RAW files and that is going to cause issues with just about any tablet.

HeliconFocus - this is the bit that sorts out all the files and maps them into one shot - with all sorts of tweaking available. You can just use this and do as you are now by loading the shots you've manually stacked.

I have done both depending on whether I can get the camera/iMac/subject near each other or whether I have to shoot away from my computer. The advantage of HeliconFocus is it is able to make very, very, very minor shifts to the focus and so take very close together slices that stack with incredible precision. I would say to download the 30 trial of the Focus software and see how you get on, you could always upgrade your licence if you purchase another camera or they include yours at a later date.

Here is a link to the full sized file saved as a jpeg - as you can see there are a couple of minor issues when viewed at 100% but you can also see the level of detail even 30 odd slices can give:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sc7uk5zyff...0Size.jpg?dl=0

[FrankMi]

I must say that I'm impressed with the results Robin. CS5 doesn't do anywhere near that well on the detail but then, I am rarely doing 30 slices either. It looks like the combination is a real winner!

I'll definitely need to find a way to play with that. The say that my D3100 will not work. Perhaps my Canon SX50 would be worth a shot. Thank you for the feedback.

[Stagecoach]

Very good result Robin.

It's prompted me to connect up my version of 'ControlMyNikon' and undertake some stacking.

[deetheturk]

Nice capture Robin, well worth all your hard work!