Handheld Focus Bracketing Landscape Photography with the Canon R5 Mirrorless
How Focus Bracketing and Focus Stacking will improve the quality of your Landscape Photography:
I have been using the Canon R5 mirrorless for the last three weeks or so, it has been a huge upgrade to my last camera, the Canon 5D mark ii. Part of the fun of getting a new camera and upgrading your gear is learning all the new features that come with the camera which are there to enable you to improve your photography, or at least make the process more easier so you can focus on nailing the shot. I am a firm believer that if a process is easier with less mental blocks then it really can open up your creative mind. Doing this photo session I focus bracket handheld in a Welsh Woodland which is a challenging scene to shoot. You will need a perfectly still day with no wind as this will affect your focus bracketing.
Where to begin?
Let’s start with the camera and the settings, I do have a video below explaining the camera setting if you're more of a visual learner like me. But here I want to go more in depth for those wanting to know the specifics of how to Focus Bracket.
You don’t have to have the Canon R5 to Focus Bracket, you can do this with any camera handheld with IBIS (in camera stabilisation) or with any camera without IBIS using a tripod. You would do this by manually changing how many images you want to take at different focal lengths. I used to do this with my Canon 5D Mark ii.
Settings Explained:
What number of shots should I select?
This all depends on the scene you are shooting. The camera will do the work for you in some ways if you are unsure. You could set it to 90 and it may interpret the scene and only take 20. The camera does this by focusing from the first point you have selected on the image up to infinity. If you are shooting a Landscape Scene then I would recommend anything between 5 - 15. This way you get the foreground in focus, the middle ground and the background. As long as these three sections are covered and are in focus then your image should be in focus throughout once stacked. If you are shooting Macro Photography then you will certainly need more shots so I would increase this to between 15-40 to ensure you are covering your subject fully.
What is Focus increment?
Focus increment is the focus shift between each exposure (how close do you want the focus points together?). This is very much dependant on your subject and your aperture. You would increase your focus increment with larger aperture values so if your were doing something like Macro Photography and shooting between F1.4 - F5.6. With this type of photography you are so much more closer to your subject so you will need more images and a larger focus increment. With landscapes where you have a smaller aperture (for example between F8-F11), you may only want the focus increment to be at around 3-4.
Exposure Smoothing?
Exposure smoothing is an automated system within the camera which kind of says what it does on the tin. When your camera takes its photos the light may change in your scene making focus stacking later on more difficult because the images won’t match in exposure. By enabling exposure smoothing you are giving the camera permission to adjust the photo exposure with each shot if required to ensure it matches the previous photo taken. This way, the series of images the camera takes will all match in exposure as best as possible.
Lets look at the results in more detail…
Editing Your Images
How to edit these images:
There are a few different options on how to edit your freshly taken images. You have come away from your location with several images and are unsure of the best way to stack them all together. After doing a little research, here are a few options on how to stack your images together.
Lightroom:
Start by editing your images in Lightroom. Edit the first image and adjust the setting to how your would like the overall final edit to look. I would leave out any cropping at this point and save that until the end. One you are happy, sync all of your focus bracketed images together so they are all the same. Once complete, open them as layers in Photoshop.
Photoshop:
Once in photoshop, you need to align your layers. Just in case when taking the image the images have fallen out of alignment. I would say if you are going handheld then this is essential as your images will have slightly fallen out of alignment as you have taken the images. It’s less of an issue if you have used a tripod but quality counts so it’s best to start with good habits now if you want quality images as you develop. You can align your layers by going to Edit > Auto-aligh layers in Photoshop. Next you want to blend all the images together. You have two options, you can either do this yourself by selecting, masking and brushing out the layers that are not in focus or if you don’t have the time to do this, Photoshop can automatically focus stack your images for you and blend them all together for you. You can do this by going into Edit > Auto-blend and select 'Stack Images’. This is a very useful tool as it cuts down the editing time, in about 2 seconds Photoshop will churn out a stacked image for you. However, the only downside to this is that Photoshop isn’t very good doing this to high standard. You’ll need to go through, quality check the stack and brush out the missed sections using the automated mask that photoshop has produced. This process can leave you with a patchwork image of focused sections and blurry sections, or it can produce a near perfect image with some minor adjustments. If Photoshop gets it right, like it has in my image then it can save you a lot of time editing.
Helicon Focus:
This is a pice of software dedicated to focus stacking, it is very intelligent and makes light work of stacking your images to a high level. If you are a serious focus stacker and do Macro Photography more than Landscape then I would say this is the software for you. I was tempted to give it a try however due to cost, I decided to go with Photoshop and save the money as I can’t see myself using this software as much as I use Photoshop and would rather save the money. But if saving isn’t on your agenda then I would recommend this software over Photoshop.
There are a number of other applications you can use to Focus Stack on the market, these are the two main ones I believe people will come across and find the most useful. Below is the final edited image I stacked in Photoshop, a focus stack of three images taken with the Canon R5 handheld and I am really impressed with the results!
The final edited image…
If you fancied watching my video on how to Focus Bracket with a short one minute edit tutorial with all of the above explained then check out the below video. I also make some banging Blackberry Flapjacks with some berries I foraged during my photography trip. The recipe is in the video description and a great snack for those long hours photographing in the forest or editing up your photos with a cuppa tea.