Helicon Soft Forum

When using Helicon Remote, what are the disadvantages of stacking by adjusting focus as opposed to position of camera on focus rail. I shoot a Canon 6D with the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens. Should I be able to capture stacks without a rail? A feature of this particular lens is internally focusing optics which will not change the physical extension (and hence distance to subject) of the lens. Thanks for any insights.

The general consensus seems to be that, for extremely close or highly magnified subjects, the rail provides the potential for smaller steps and therfore less chance of having a portion skipped.

Usually we recommend to use StackShot rails in cases when extremely small step (0.01 mm) is required. In other cases both lens refocusing and camera movement on StackShot give almost identical effect.
Also, depending on your specific usage of focus stacking, and the lens you use, you may or may not face the problem of focus drift that's inherent to every lens. Stackshot solves that problem.