How and Why I Focus Bracket my Fungi Photography
In this video I walk you through the focus bracketing process that I use for my fungi and close up photography. I take you through the manual process with a Laowa 100mm 2x Ultra Macro APO and the in-camera focus shift shooting option on my Nikon D850 with a Sigma 105mm f/2.8, while discussing why I choose to bracket my images.
For those interested in the specific gear used in this video, I will leave the appropriate links below! Thank you for watching and I will see you next time.
Nikon D850 Camera Body:
Amazon Link: geni.us/N17FAIs
Buy Used: prf.hn/l/bx28dxn
Multi-Angle Tripod: www.vanguardworld.co.uk/produ... ( 10% off with code CVP10)
Amazon Link: geni.us/cwadnY
Reversible Travel Tripod: www.vanguardworld.co.uk/produ... ( 10% off with code CVP10)
Amazon Link: geni.us/B5bsE6z
Laowa 100mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO Lens:
Amazon Link: geni.us/OK9uo
Laowa Website: www.venuslens.net/product/lao...
Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro Lens
Amazon Link: geni.us/g6bEIul
Sigma Website: www.sigma-global.com/en/lense...
Buy Used: prf.hn/l/XZJwMZy
Full Gear List: www.courtneyvictoriaphotograp...
Website: www.courtneyvictoriaphotography.com
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro and Gear
1:39 Manually Bracketing
4:15 Why focus bracketing?
5:24 In-camera bracketing + how many photos do I need?
9:40 Difficulties and process wrap up.
11:32 Whoops!
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Music used in this video is sourced at Epidemic Sound. Sign-up here for a 30-day free trial and access to huge libraries of sound and music with no license worries.
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#focusbracketing #nikond850 #macrophotography #fungi
A good tip is before starting a focus bracket take a photo of your hand, then at the end of the shot take a photo of your hand. It just means when you get back to base and focus stack you can see what shots belong to each stack.
You're so right Fraser! A simple but important tip that can save a lot of frustration in post-processing.
I thought I was the only one who did that! Thumbs up when starting, thumbs down at the end.
Similar, but I take a shot with the lens cap on, so there are two black frames as brackets.
On the Nikon d850 and z9 you can set the camera to start a new folder each time you do a stacked series. Which means that you do not have to put your hand in front of each series.
I change the filename prefix every time I do a stack making it AAA instead of the default DSC. You have to remember to change it back of course which I am currently doing 25% of time.
Love BOTH of technical dedication plus the artful approach. Superb video. Inspiring.
Very interesting. Would love to see your post-processing work with those images.
Yoshida it twice-- "stacketing" - brilliant! The new name for the complete process. Stacking + bracketing. I love it!
Watch that get stuck in my mind the next time I need to talk about it. Or else I'll try to hard to avoid it, and wind up saying "focus bracking" instead.
I recently adopted a new technique for landscape images. I dial in 1 sec of exposure delay, switch on the interval timer with 5 second intervals, then add 3 image exposure bracketing and 6 image focus stacking, depending on the light I might also bracket the ISO and white balance. I call my new technique 'Timeterval Deposed Isobalanced Bocus Stackering'. The images are crap, but at least I get to use all the in camera functions I paid for! Love the technique videos BTW.
Brilliant!
@@Robert-R
😂😂😂
I can't tell you how much I enjoy your videos. Very informative. Hi from Sandpoint, Idaho USA
‘Stacketing’ @6:29 made me chuckle. This should be a real term 🤣
Bocus Fracketing for the win! 😜
Nice balance of technical and non-technical. I use a focus rail at home with the same macro lens you use, but in the field I use in-camera bracketing on a zoom lens with a close up filter attached. As you say, there are so many variables in the field that I want to expose the shots quickly. Btw, the rail I use is a Nisi, great quality and sensibly priced.
Brilliant video, Courtney!
Great technic & awesome result 😎
Thank you so much for the explanation. You have a lovely, simple, and effective way of putting things that make it easy to understand. So yes, please, to other talks on lessons you want to share. I'm a definite starter for watching them. Regards, Gerard
Great tutorial Courtney, thank you so much😊
Loved this. Thank you!
One of the most watchable "how to" videos I have seen. Excellent and very human narration, explanations, and the reality of bloomin' rain, cold, kicking leaves and all the rest of fungi photography. Thank you. From the early days of digital photography - the first (or maybe second?) camera we used was a Canon S10 back in 1999. 2.11 megapixels.Came with an 8 MB CF card! Storage capacity and battery life were severe limits in absolute number of photos we could take. And bracketing was unthinkable. Strictly for fun. A lot of it was a way of more deeply enjoying the woodland in the area. And many of the photos were just as a personal record and to try to identify the fungi. Got several thousand viewable photos - and many more thousand so bad they were immediately deleted.
Thank you, Courtney. A great video
Thank you. A great intro video for this learner
Beautiful work,great presentation,so informative. Thank you
Excellent vídeo my friend, amazing work 👏👏❤❤
Very insightful and great image.
Yes, love the more technical aspect, or how-to, videos and I tend to lean more towards this type of content. This was a great video, thank you!
Another great video Courtney! Love what you do and I really liked the focus bracketing process. Would like to see a little more of that and other camera tips and how to's. Keep up the great work. Texas love and stay safe!
Great job Courtney! Your pics are great. Your personality is great while you explain how you shoot pics.
Brilliant video! Thank you.
Great teaching video! I will be trying that! Thank you very much!
We learned things on this, so keep up the balance of technical information and excellent detailed fungi photos
Photus stacketing! Sounds like a brilliant new technique. Can't wait to give it a try.
very helpful, thank you. was just about to delve into focus bracketing.
Loved this video. You have a sense of calm about you that makes it easy to learn. Would love more instructional videos along with your awesome image content 💛
Thank you Courtney for a thoroughly interesting & fun video. I especially loved the new words, genius :)
dam fine shots. like your style and the methods used, I shall give it a whirl, I sometimes depending on the depth take the lens further back to give a slight deeper depth, and I am also known for clicking into the tripod legs.
Very interesting not tried stacking yet but I will. Really enjoy your videos, thanks.
Awesome video ❤ shots
Another excellent video.
The pace at which you present everything is so refreshing. Thank you! 🙏 Oh, and subbed. :3
Your videos are really motivating. I enjoyed watching your technique on focus bracketing. I'd enjoy seeing more of your videos cover the processes that you use to create your beautiful images.
Thanks. Love the video
You are great. Thank you.
I discovered your channel a few weeks ago. I really admire and enjoy your work and so I subscribed. I'm a 70 years OLD guy in Illinois.
Courtney, another great video, I love it. Makes me want to go for a walk in the woods... take my time.. and look... look for composition in the little things.
Thank you. A great into video for this learner.
I just recently subscribed to your channel. I truly enjoy watching the processes that you demonstrate and the fact that you also inject your personality into every video. I have been reading up on the method and now that I see it in practice, I feel more confident about doing it. Great job and keep on creating content!
This was very helpful. Thank you! It is also helpful when you show us the equiptment you are using and explain why you chose them. I am grateful that you are continuing to use your DSLR's, as am using the Nikon D500, which I love.
2 thumbs up for this video (although I love all of your videos) - greatly appreciate the information shared (and more insight into what you do). Keep up the great work! 👍
Yes please to more like this. I also use a D850, always good to see how a pro is using the camera I love
Nice ! If you buy a "smallrig" cage, you can leave your camera facing the right way (upright); when you put it upside down, everything gets complicated :)
Very helpful. Thank you very much.
I haven't done macro since August. Today was the first time in months that I took my macro lens with me and went to a nearby forest. Most of my shots used focus bracketing. And then you release a video on what I did all morning. Impeccable timing!
Very informative…thank you
Really inspiring work. I shoot a lot in the forest and never with the patience and determination that you demonstrate. I love your images. You make me want to get out, especially with spring just awakening here on the west coast of North America.
Thanks for the lesson Courtney I had my doubts about focus stacking and bracketing, it seemed the same to me and as you mentioned, some call it one way or another
I'm somewhat of a recent viewer, bouncing around your videos. I do enjoy your more technical discussion on your beautiful photography. Thank you, Tom.
Love your videos for their inspiration, entertainment and educational content! A great introduction to focus stacking. When working in a slight breeze with subjects that can move (like wildflowers), that's the time to have a remote shutter release so you can choose when to trip the shutter in your focus stack. I love the in-camera focus-shift mode but it can fail with a slightly moving subject. BTW, I've "kicked" my composition a few times myself! Nicely done!😁
I use a focus rail with my Laowa 2x-5x Ultrs Macro because I have to (there is no focus ability on the lens and thus, one has to move the lens to focus). That said, focus stacking with a manual lens on a Canon 5D MK IV is a real task because the camera isn't recording any distance data (which means the native focus stacking in the Canon software is useless in this instance (that is, without some serious meta data hacking pr using third party software). Also, as you move the camera on the rail. You can get some interesting perspective changes as the rail is advanced.
Excellent video
Just discovered your channel,love it and your photos!
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Courtney for an excellent & interesting video....I have never used this process for micro photography so maybe I can try sometime.... keep up the good work... cheers from Australia 🦘🦘😊
Hello Courtney, first I'd like to say it's always a joy to see you films. Me personally started with macro 1,5 years ago, by buying an macro lens. When I saw how small the depth of field is, i decided to buy focusing rack (Novoflex Castel-Q, not cheap but very well built) and I must say I have never regret it. It makes the stacking so much easier for static objects like yours. Here my work flow: 1) i decide which aperture I wonna use, depends how blurry i want to get the background. 2) according to the aperture and the distance I check, with a app, the depth of field so I know the length of steps i use at the rail. I use steps between 1/3 and 1/2 of the depth of field. 3) I set the settings in manual mode 4) with the focus peaking mode I can check the start and end point I'd like to have in focus. I take the fotographs and the rest are the work for the software. 😉
I love your work and in love with you!
I think you just gave us a great photographic technical word in fotus . . . .
Watching your videos is making me want to try macro photography. I loved the bloopers at the endow this video. I usually kick my tripod instead of the composition.
Excellent video Courtney. Over the winter months I've acquired a Nikon Z6ii + Sigma 105 macro lens + FTZ adapter, I'm now looking forward to getting out and using the focus shift shooting mode. Keep up the good work 👍
For me a flash is a must in macro photography.
In my personal experience, flash and fungi do not go well together. The white parts that so many fungi have over-expose (white out) so incredibly easily. Where they are white, they can be extremely reflective. Even if you manage to avoid that, you are so often wanting at least some surroundings included which will likely end up very under-exposed. And shadows can be ever so harsh. If you use multiple flashes, or if you are wanting only a very tight area, you can achieve OK results. Not saying it is impossible to get good flash photos. But with my limited equipment, it was difficult.
I'm in love 😍
THANKS! So with your splendid help I discovered this feature on my D 850. Think I am going to try it out tomorrow. With 10 Pics and a smaller aperture. Did some shots with popcorn years ago - just ONE in the frame, black background and smallest f-stop. Took just 2 pics, front and rear focus. Combined in PS. Worked quite well.
I would love to see a video on your editing and culling process when focus stacking as well
Loved this video Courtney. Maybe you can do more? I bought a Canon R5 at the beginning of the year and it has automatic photo stacking on it. I've tested it on a few indoor subjects and loved the feature. I hope to use it more. I'll take in what you said about how many shots are required for the given subject. Loved the end of the video😆
thank you, great video as always! also 7:30 the answer is 45, I was paying attention in the earlier part of the video!
You are hilarious! I love your outtakes! Seriously you have some great shots. I'm now going to look into focus bracketing for my next field trip. Thank You! Which do you prefer, in camera focus shift shotting or manual shift shooting?
Well presented. There is nothing to add. I call it a focus stacking set, that I will focus stack (similarly, my exposure bracketed fir HDR I call HDR sets). All of my camera bags have remote shutter releases, so that I am never without. Mushrooms are so fascinating. I love the amazing, tiny structures. And, mushrooms don’t fly away like birds.
I found this episode very helpful, however I’m not clear how they are processed. I’d like to see an episode on processing the shots.
I love the outtakes🤣 Thanks for sharing your technique. Love your photos and videos, always very helpful. I just got my first dedicated macro lens, and boy HOWDY (yes, i'm American😁) that plane is really razor thin. It's going to take some getting used to but I am looking forward to the learning process. You are truly an inspiration, thanks (or is it "Cheers?)
Thank you so much for a great explanation and demonstration of focus stacking / bracketing, and for keeping it amusing as well as informative. Another advantage of focus bracketing/stacking is that you can keep the aperture wide and have the background blurred, compared with a single shot at f16 or more. Please treat yourself to a shutter release, Courtney: all those 10 seconds with the timer soon mount up!
Always enjoy your videos, Courtney. Love your style. With regard to using a focusing rail a couple of advantages, if you don't mind spending some time, are that you can more accurately control your focal plane positioning since you can just turn the knob by a discrete amount (such as a 1/4 or 1/2 turn, etc.), and you can eliminate any focus breathing issues your lens may have since you're not refocusing the lens. The focus breathing is not a huge concern as the stacking software will typically handle it pretty well, but on occasions it can cause a problem.
Love the bloopers 😂
lovely video help me out i like macro photography thank you Victoria Neill
Понятно и доходчиво всё рассказала. И сама девушка с красивой улыбкой 😁
Lovely explanation on this Cortney and some new words for the English dictionary too. 😹
Hi. Love your channel and always look forward to your new vids. Please put as much technical detail as you can we love it. I also wanted to see the post processing as you never show us that. In my opinion a photograph is 60% taking and 40% making. Keep up the good work. Thanks.
It was nice to say hello to you at the Photography Show on the Vanguard stand, I find your videos very calming and professional as you sell the art of photography beautifully.
Thanks a lot
I use a Manfrotto focussing plate for macro. It has incremental adjustment for forward and reverse. It makes stacking easy as you don’t need to touch the lens.
You only need a rail for the smallest of subjects. At tiny scales you want to move the camera to stack focus; pulling focus on the lens for each shot will create a series of images with varying ratios of magnification.
Thank you for this tutorial and forgetting to the point! Once you have a series of photos, how do you combine them? It would be so helpful if you could do a post processing video.
Nikon call it "focus shift shooting" when referencing "at shoot time" and, indeed, "stacking" references what happens in post. As you get the individual images, in case you defined small focus increments, you can determine Depth of Field in post by using more or less frames from the focus shift shooting into the stack - and determine that on either end. Someone yes-butted me in another comments the other day that Depth of Field (DoF) is ambiguous. This is true, in general, but not if you actually involve the fourth value/parameter in the DoF formula. As people abstract the "Circle of Confusion" [1] (CoC) away, DoF becomes ambiguous indeed. So we need to go to the core of DoF by breaking the CoC down and being aware of it. The beauty of "focus shift shooting" is that we can play with CoC and DoF in post. My pet peeve with focus shift shooting is that I cannot use it with a subject with some motion in it - it only works when no time parallax issues are visible between the frames in the stack. In which cases I might want a tilt/shift lens that allows me to rotate the focused-on plane and hence alter the 3D DoF space relative to the 2D frame. [1] CoC combines the impact of the following variables into one parameter in the DoF formula: (a) film/sensor resolution - more makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper (b) lens resolution - more makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper (c) processing - better makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper (d) display resolution - more makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper (e) display size - larger makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper (f) viewer-display distance - shorter makes CoC smaller and DoF deeper
Originally, I had setup a ruler @ 45° in my home studio to work out the focus step width and have a pre--printed conversion table available. But since I primarily work in the studio, it's very easy for me to actually measure the depth of field on my manual focusing rail (either crudely counting revolutions on the adjustment knob or precisely measuring the travel with a depth indicator with a resolution of .001"). Plugging that information into a home made Excel spreadsheet calculator gave me whatever I needed. But upgrading to using a StackShot controller and automated rail, all of that was replaced with the internal electronics. Quite easy under "laboratory conditions". How you do it in the field seems almost like black magic to a simple studio photographer. 😅
Thank you
TQ FOR YOUR VIDEO
Firstly, some lenses, for example, the Carl Zeiss macro lenses, have an engraving which indicates the range of distances where the image is sharp at the aperture chosen. This allows to reliably estimate how much the distance ring has to be turned from one shot of a sequence to the next shot. (Also the Laowa macro lens has such a ring but unfortunately it is complete nonsense and, thus, fully useless.) And secondly, fungi are usually not affected by wind, only bugs crawling around may cause some trouble as you have nicely demonstrated. Often I see this surprise when I am back at home. Usually it is best to shot a few sequences and select the best one at home. If your subject is a flower with a thin and flexible stem and there is some even slight wind, a sequence with the timer function and the mirror pre-raising function would last much longer than any calm period without wind. In the case that there is a lot of light and the shutter speed is very fast, it sometimes works to set the camera to the continuous-shooting mode, switch off the timer and the mirror pre-raising function, wait for a calm moment, then press the release button and continuously turn the distance ring during the continuous shooting. I know, this is not optimum, but sometimes it is the only chance. Do you have any better idea?
Beautiful images, I wish I had mushrooms here, we only get the bracket type at the moment.
You could always combine the two terms "stacking & bracketing" to "focus stacketing." :)
Very nice video, well explained! My question is, how to proceed with this photos to get them all together into one image. Do I need a special software?
Superbly produced video. Your video content and story line are understandable, information rich, and engaging. Is your post-field workflow image stacking done in Photoshop? Thanks for sharing.
A very informative video, thanks, do you edit in Lightroom or photoshop?
Think of using a rail as very similar to the manual focus stacking, but much more precise and less prone to error. YMMV depending on model, but you can often get precise steps where twisting a lens is harder to do as precisely and the risk is higher of moving the camera when you're pulling the lens. If you want to take it next level, then Rollei makes a relatively cheap electronic focusing rail.
Fun and informative video, just curious to know what software do you use to stack your images?
Отличное, содержательное видео.
The primary technical difference between using a focussing rail and adjusting focus via the lens is that when using a focussing rail the magnification factor remains constant whereas as you change focus on the lens the magnification changes, it can make a difference but typically not. What is useful is a motor driven rail with shutter trigger as it allows automated focus bracketing with manual focus lenses.
I think that's more a studio thing. See the channel Look Closer of ideas why you would not do that in the field. I commonly photograph stuff that's moving.
As I often say, but I say it with sincerity Thank you for sharing the video Because no one can imagine the work that this requires THANKS Otherwise, with the rail for focusing, this avoids touching the lens, it's another approach and in super macro, this allows for more fineness in advance, depending on the threading of the screw