Great brief review Mark. Helicon Focus has been a "secret" tool of mine for years and the latest version is very good. You didn't mention that it isn't cheap. I have also found a free tool called CombineZM at http://hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/News.htm which is nearly as good, especially considering that it is free! You should try it.

Here is a macro I made with Helicon Focus some time back.... http://www.pbase.com/meleader/image/72322631/original.jpg

Malcolm

Thanks for the review, I have also been using HF for nearly 2 years with good overall results. I did personnally not see a huge enhancement going to the latest version, it worked already pretty good before but still requires a lot of manual intervention in many cases.

Indeed, the comments on the workload required for actual landscape shooting should not be underestimated though, it can be time consuming to assemble images containing elements that moved (trees, water,...).

Besides, the process of selecting the focus points required to have a seamless infinite DoF from front to back is far from being trivial.

Anyway, good fun can be had with the technique, and even more fun can be had when it is combined with panoramic shooting like in the 500 megapixel image below.



Cheers,
Bernard

I've found that CombineZ seems to exaggerate noise and increase contrast slightly, but it seems less prone to ghost image elements than Focus. It would be interesting to see an objective comparison between the latest versions of the two programmes. CombineZM I think was superseded some time ago.

The focus stacking in CS4 is very disappointing, given that it was one of my main reasons for upgrading.

The focus stacking in CS4 is very disappointing, given that it was one of my main reasons for upgrading.
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I agree, the CS4 implementation hasn't worked at all for me. I expect more when I pay the NEXT upgrade fee.....

CombineZM has some faults but it is actively supported (the author ususlly respondes immediately) and the price is right!

Malcolm

I agree

I also use helicon a fair bit along with stitching typically 8-12 frames together. The workload for each image becomes pretty huge and I need to use 3 different pieces of software for various tasks:

Raw conversion in LR (or NX2) to tiff
Focus blend the necissery shots in helicon and save as tiff
Sort out the tiff files are no longer needed and stitch together in CS4

Helicon has always worked extremely well for me and is very quick. CS4 on the other hand is almost totally useless.

Bernard, are there any good tricks or guidelines you would share?

Hening.

The least risky scenario is to focus on each remarkable feature of the scene to make sure that at least those will be critically sharp.

Beyond that, you get a feel for the local DoF you will get at a given aperture for a given distance. Always working with the same lens obvously helps a lot.

Finally, I typically use an aperture one or 2 stops down from optimal, meaning usually f11 or f13 on my Zeiss 100mm f2.0.

Cheers,
Bernard

The only other tip I would add is shoot 2x as many frames as you anticipate needing, focusing BETWEEN the key elements Bernard mentions, so as to keep ghosts to a minimum...

Thanks to the both of you! - Hening.