After watching Hasselblad's very long webinar on focus stacking where they said the step size is something you develop a "feel" for after real world usage, what's the optimal step size and number of frames setting people have found for landscape shots?
I almost always shoot at f/8 or above, and usually focus on the further point and then have the camera work towards near infinity. I basically only use focus stacking for indoor architectural shots or outdoor landscapes with a very near foreground POI (such and a wide angle shot of wild flowers with mountains in the background). Are 10 shots at medium step sizes enough?
Something I would love to know as well. For landscapes I've been basically focus stacking manually: so I do one at infinity, another one somewhere mid distance, and another one at close distance. That said the widest lens I shot is 30mm and usually at f8 ~ f11.
I use the focus stacking mode when shooting objects and closer focus, and still I fumble a bit with the settings and I'm yet to find a go to template.
Curious to know what others do.
I had the same question for my X2D and Jim K was able to help.
One "simply" needs to use the "Thin Lens Equation" - I put it into an excel spreadsheet and have attached a screenshot for an X2D
Search on DP Review Forum for the thread titled "How does one calculate how may exposures to use in a focus-stack sequence" - there is a link to a spreadsheet in the thread.
After multiple personal trials, I use 1,3 or 2 pixels steps (small or medium) with my 50 Mpix X cameras for maximal sharpness landscapes.
this method fits well to the 21mm lens at 5.6 from 0.3m to infinity maximal sharpness.
I just have to start the shooting at infinity after AF focusing so that infinity does not fall between two steps and discard excessive frames at shortest distance.
The main problem is wind for shortest distance grasses, that makes stacking from very difficult to impossible.
After stacking I push the 50 Mpix file to 200 Mpix in Gigapixel AI without any loss, for giant prints at Epson 360 DPI
It's worth stating that the steps *are* smaller with the X2D to exactly match the smaller pixel size. So you can use the same setting on each camera - you'll just get more frames from the X2D stack. (I have both X1D and X2D and did the test.)