Focus Stacking and Exposure Blending Tutorial

In this video tutorial, I show you how to combine focus stacking and exposure blending. I show you the in-the-field workflow you can apply to landscape and architecture photography, and I share the photo editing that is required to put everything together.
For it, I take you behind the scenes of a landscape photography shoot I did a few weeks ago in the German Rhön, where I was trying to photograph some beautiful beech trees. I talk you through my composition and through the techniques I used to capture the final image.
I show you how I use the automatic focus bracketing feature of the Canon EOS R5 to capture the photos for the stacking sequence and how I then switch to exposure bracketing for the background.
★☆★ Focus Stacking in Landscape Photography ★☆★
www.mibreit-ph...
#LandscapePhotography #focusstacking #CanonR5

[@UHFStation1]

I need to exposure stack manually. I don't have PS and I think it's important to know how things are actually done.

[@mibreit-photo]

You can also use Gimp (free), Same Workflow with layers and manual masking

[@pay_]

man this is a lovely area! those rocks and grass Edit: also really like your 4k uploads, recently got an LG OLED 😃 it's amazing on it

[@KGi4]

Love this beauty of complicity. I use same techniques also with time blending and some panorama stuff. In my opinion photography should be challenging to make you grow as visual creator and never stay in your comfort zone :)

[@flameout12345]

@6:22 you mentioned repeating? What exactly do you mean? Lets say you have a sunset how would you focus + exposure blend?

[@mibreit-photo]

With repeating I mean I take multiple sequences throughout the evening to capture the best possible light. As for the second question, I think I answer it in this video -> www.mibreit-photo.com/blog/focus-stacking-in-landscape-photography/ too

[@norbertzessack9467]

wie immer ein gelungenes Video Michael👍🏻 why aren’t you using the automatic focus stacking in PS? In areas where it doesn’t do a good job it’s possible to fix the mask manual? VG Norbert

[@mibreit-photo]

Hallo Norbert, Ich habe noch die CS6 Version von Photoshop und da funktioniert das Stacking nicht gut genug. 10% sind fast immer falsch und ich muss dann in 100% View über das gesamte Bild gehen und aufräumen. Dann kann ich das auch gleich selber machen ;-) Ich denke ich werde bald mal auf die letzte Version von Photoshop umsteigen und schauen ob das besser funktioniert.

[@alpinewonders]

very watchable as always Michael. Do you think it would be worth going to the trouble to buy a parfocal lens for easier, more artifact free focus stacking?

[@mibreit-photo]

Well, I never had to many problems aligning the images in post. When buying a lens I rather look for overall sharpness and I don't mind a bit of focus breathing. To be honest I didn't even include this aspect of a lens into my research when looking for lenses till now ;-)

[@ademcfade]

looks very much like Yorkshire in England :) I have just had my first outing doing focus bracketing on landscapes and it is very rewarding using the R5 compared to doing it manually with my old 5D mark 4

[@mibreit-photo]

It really is. Now combine it with using high ISOs together with LR denoise and some automatic stacking in Helicon and you suddenly can do focus stacking in situations where it was nearly impossible before ;-)

[@ademcfade]

@@mibreit-photo I've got the demo of Helicon installed actually - just pondering it, I'm a HUGE fan of batch processing, I bought PT GUI PRO to batch process drone panoramics more convincingly than Lightroom does... so can probably see Helicon getting bought :-) Just on the stacking settings on the R5 I set it to 12 shots and on the "Focus increment" set to "4" - just a guess on my part. Sometimes it took all 12, others just 3 or 4 - depends how close the nearest object I focussed on was I think.... Have you tried the increment at different settings for Landscape, is there any benefit going lower, say 1 or 2? Or is higher, 6 or 7, ok. I've not really seen much info on this, so just testing it out at the moment. Great camera... very impressed after 4 weeks

[@mibreit-photo]

@@ademcfade Hello Adrian, one tip for the stacking settings in Canon R5 -> Do not limit the maximum number of shots too much. I have it now at 50. Because you will otherwise at some point run into a usecase, where it stops taking photos although it hasn't yet covered the whole DOF. Noticing this later at home is bad. Secondly, I would just set the smallest step setting, because this works best with the automatic stacking tools. Don't try to fine-tune the size to get less images and optimize the overlap. Just go with the most photos the camera will take for you and decide in post if you need those or not. You can always delete reduntant photos later, but you often cannot go back to retake the photo.

[@stevemckenzie4731]

Thanks Michael. Appreciate you putting these out.

[@puyrm]

way too much rambling

[@slawomirkowalczyk5394]

Hello Can you betray what R5 settings you use for Focus Stacking? Of course, apart from turning on the Focus Stacking itself :-)

[@mibreit-photo]

I will Post a Photo of the settings soon. Currently I am in the go

[@slawomirkowalczyk5394]

@@mibreit-photo thank you very much and a happy trip!

[@Mehaara]

Da suche ich nach Focus Bracketing und finde jemanden, der bei mir zu Hause fotografiert! Vielen Dank, super schön gemacht. Schöne Grüße aus der Rhön!

[@mibreit-photo]

Grüße zurück. Immer wieder schön in der Heimat

[@nandav8494]

Half the videonis about getting ready to photograph.

[@mibreit-photo]

Good observation. I wanted to show the whole experience of a typical photo shoot but with a focus on stacking

[@nandav8494]

I use promote control

[@matthiasfah651]

Tolles Video. Mit meinem EF 100-400 kriege ich mit der Bracketingfunktion nur ca. die Hälfte scharf. Egal ob mit 10 oder 300 Bildern. Kannst du mir evtl. helfen? Gruss

[@mibreit-photo]

Da ich das Objektiv nicht habe kann ich nicht sagen woran es liegt. Hast du schon probiert den Abstand zwischen den Fokus Punkten zu erhöhen?

[@matthiasfah651]

@@mibreit-photo Danke für die schnelle Antwort :). Welche Einstellungen hast du bei welchen Objektiven hierbei? Gruss