Tag Archives: Focus stacking

Stacked Arctic Landscapes

August 22, 2018 by Stephan Russenschuck | 0 Comments

Balancing rock: Kollorsuaq, Greenland, 16 mm, f/8, stack of 6 images

I’m back from an expedition cruise to the Baffin Bay high up in the Arctic between Canada and Greenland, a trip that brought me back to the roots as a landscape photographer.

Landscapes have been my exclusive subjects for more than 20 years when shooting film with a 4×5 view camera. Landscapes require detail. A beautiful scene, matching light (there is no such thing as bad light as everything boils down to finding a subject that matches the light), a solid composition, and exceptional detail in both the shadows and the highlights can create another level of viewing pleasure; the finished print revealing more detail than was perceivable with the naked eye.

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Concours d’Elegance Suisse with the Nikon D850

June 30, 2018 by Stephan Russenschuck | 0 Comments

Under a far too bright sun (from a photographer’s point of view), the classic car competition “Concours d’Elegance Suisse” at the Château de Coppet attracted 85 historic cars classified in 15 categories, all defined by a Jury that is also involved in the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in Italy and the Pebble Beach Competition in the USA.

While the 60th anniversary of the legendary Aston Martin DB4 and the Ferrari 250 GT Coupe Pininfarina were celebrated by two dedicated classes, the exhibition also included gems such as the Hispano Suiza H6B, Delage D8-120, Bugatti Type 57 S, and the Mercedes-Benz 500K, among others.

This event was a good occasion to bring out my new Nikon D850. Shiny cars in the bright sun are indeed a torture test for the camera’s dynamic range. Judged in many reviews as perhaps the best (last) DSLR on the market, it is surprising that the D850 is still not on stock everywhere. And with the recent QA problems, I had to wait until I could test the flange and sensor alignment in the shop – before pulling out the credit card.

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Fossography

September 8, 2017 by Stephan Russenschuck | 0 Comments

Gullfoss, Iceland. Nikon D810, Nikkor 28 f/1.4, at f/11, 4 s, ISO 50. Composite image with focus stack on foreground. 6-stop ND filter.

I never understood why waterfalls grab the hearts and minds of so many photographers. Go to any location that advertises a waterfall and it is guaranteed that there will be a large parking space, lots of cars, and buses with their engines idling. Masses of people, often out of shape, hike along a trail. The first action when the lookout point is reached is to pull out a camera and photograph the falls. In post-processing the images are cropped just above the pool, around which the fellow visitors had their picnic.

More recently, a popular thing seems to be “dying for a selfie”; people standing extremely close with their back on the brink of a fall, trying to get the best perspective of themselves leaning over the gorge.

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Focus Stacking, Part 1: Introduction

August 4, 2016 by Stephan Russenschuck | 0 Comments
Toscana

Toscana, Italy: Three stack composite along the horizontal lines of the fields. 85 mm, f/9.

Focus stacking, also known as z stacking or depth of field blending, is a technique that combines multiple images focused at different planes, to obtain a greater depth of field. This is particularly useful in situations where the scene has a large range of depths in the subject space compared to the shallow depth of field obtained for a given sensor size, focal length, and aperture combination. This is often so in macro, landscape, and architectural work.

It is important to recall that for every single, non-stacked, image there is one (and only one) plane in the subject space at which the image points on the sensor are exactly sharp, that is, point like. Any point of a subject in another plane will be imaged as a disk, know as the blur spot. If this disk is sufficiently small for a given magnification and viewing distance, it will be indistinguishable from a point. The diameter of a sufficiently small blur spot is known as the acceptable circle of confusion. The acceptable sharpness between two planes on either side of the focal plane is known as the depth of field (DoF). These planes are always at right angles to the sensor plane unless we explore view cameras or use tilt/shift lenses on DSLRs.

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