Focus-stacked Panorama

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snapzilla
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Joined: 16.04.2019 23:11

Focus-stacked Panorama

Post by snapzilla »

I'm going to be manually shooting focus stacks for each image of a panorama - landscape and indoors.

My plan is to shoot a separate pano row for each focus point - eg 1 row at closest focus, 1 row for next closest focus point etc. Then after uploading I'll arrange images into ordered stacks, create focus stacked images in Helicon Focus, and merge resulting images into a panorama in PTGui.

I have two questions -

1. Should the focus points be based on each separate image in the pano, or should they be at consistent distances for all images in the pano?

2. For a given aperture how do I decide the number and spacing of focus points?
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Stas Yatsenko
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Joined: 06.05.2009 14:05
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Re: Focus-stacked Panorama

Post by Stas Yatsenko »

If you follow your workflow, each focus stack is independent from others, so you can choose focus points as you like (use method A or C if focus changes are not sequential). As to aperture, it should be calculated with any depth of field calculators. I would recommend to rotate focusing ring by an equal step, say 10 degrees. By trial and error you can find the rotation angle which allows to keep everything in focus.
I would also recommend you to make focus stack for each position, and then move to the next pano position.
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