This photo of the Kowa E camera I reviewed recently is my first attempt at focus stacking with Photoshop.
The process is very simple if you have the app. There are just two steps:
1) Edit > Auto-Align Layers
2) Edit > Auto-Blend Layers
Focus stacking is a technique of combining multiple images of the same thing taken at various focus settings. This is useful for photos of objects taken up close with large apertures as those factors combined create a very narrow depth of field (more about it here: analog.cafe/r/what-is-aper…).
In my case, I had two photos, one had the lens in focus (with the camera body blurry), and another was focused on the body. Neither looked good on their own.
Surprisingly, the focus stacking technique worked well, despite the difference in geometric distortions and perspective, as the photos I had were taken on a half-frame SLR (analog.cafe/r/my-olympus-p…), hand-held. The only thing the app struggled with was blending the blurry background, which I ended up blending in from one of the original photos manually.
Notice the tip of the pentaprism bump — the dark artifact behind it is the result of Photoshop not coping well with the samples I gave it.
Both are tiny full-frame zone-focus foldable point-and-shoots that cost less than they are worth. I’ve had them for many years, and the articles had to have a bit of a refresh in terms of sample photos and some spelling issues (Balda is hard to spell).
I don’t, but I’m certainly planning to in the near future. I’m hoping it’ll help me refine what I wrote here and maybe come up with a more systematic colour correction step.
Here’s another YouTube video. This time, it’s a promo for ONDU Ekian large format camera: youtube.com/watch?v=Y3xKfd…
I’ve seen a lot of Kickstarter videos for many photography-related products. Naturally, larger businesses can afford better footage, but the producers and Elvis Halilović, the founder, seem to have outdone most — if not all. He literally takes a flight at the end of the video.
All to promote a (beautiful) camera. Kinda badass.
I had this camera in the 70’s and early 80’s. Wonderful. I just bought another one recently, and this article was very useful in reminding me of it’s ins and outs. Telling me which batteries to get was essential.
Great article! I think the the ISO dial is placed on top for easy exposure compensation. Most advanced photogs would have no problem calculating one or two stops over or under exposure using that adjustment. I think it was more of a practical than esthetic positioning. Thanks, @Br1anw1x.
ciao, complimenti per l’articolo, vorrei prendere una Penti 0 perché è più bella e più semplice della mia Penti II che credo di aver rotto: cioè chiudendo il dorso si è spostato qualcosa dentro al mirino e ora c’è un pezzo nero che si muove dentro e non vedo più come inquadrare, anche il rettangolo che delimita la corretta inquadratura si è spostato e si muove ogni volta che scatto. C’è un modo di sistemarlo o devo buttare la fotocamera? Grazie
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