Smartphone focus stacking

[Scottl]

I have used Helicon Focus in the past and was very happy with it.  I wanted to do some focus work with new scenes in my layout and did not want to pay for a licence (yet) so I looked around and found a free solution that is at first glance quite servicable.

For those not used to the process, I take photos with my Samsung phone and the free Open Camera app on Google Play(available for Apple too, I think) https://opencamera.org.uk/.  You can choose the focus bracketing mode and the number of pictures you want.  I used 10 for the photo below and perhaps could have benefited from more.  I also set the timer to 10 seconds and mount my camera to a tripod with a cheap cell tripod bracket.  It works very quickly and produces the images at various focus depths.

I then used Focus Stacking Online (https://focusstackingonline.com/ to load the 10 pictures and stack it into a single image.  It works very well and is simple to use.

Here are a few examples.  I have some troublesome trees that are too close to the camera to focus but otherwise, I don't see any visible issues and the images have good focus throughout.

No affiliation with either, but figured some might like to have an accessible (and free) solution.

[MVW]

Yep, very happy to see this. Thanks for sharing!

Jim

[Tad_T]

Nicely done, sir.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Damn, I've been trying to figure this exact thing out for years!

[Scottl]

Here is a better stacked image with a scene view of about 9' from locomotive to backdrop.  The key to using Open Camera seems to be to approximately set the ranges of front and back using the sliders on screen that show up when you are in Focus Bracketing mode.  The locomotive was about 8" from the camera in this shot and the stack was composed of 10 pictures.  The foreground spruce tree is about 4" from the camera.

There are a few other settings you can play with and much depends on what your camera can physically do.  For instance, on my newer phone the wide angle lens does not seem to allow Focus Bracketing, while the mid and zoom lenses both allow it within Open Camera. 

[Philip H]

Sadly, according to the website this is just available for Android.

Le sigh.

 

[garethashenden]

Sadly, according to the website this is just available for Android.

Le sigh.

 

I've used CameraPixels on iOS to capture multiple images and then Affinity Photo to merge them. I think there are other options too.