focusing stage?? i dont even know what that is lol.. if its another term for a macro focus rail then yes i have just ordered one & it will be arriving shortly! which software do you recommend for focus stacking???
Hi Dan,
Congratulations on the first presentable results from this very special lens. At these magnification factors (1:1 - 5:1) there is extremely little Depth of Field, but there are also other challenges to conquer (like a dark viewfinder, and difficulty to find the subject when moving the camera or when the subject moves). On a semi-stationary setup, a focus rail will help because that's the way one focuses with a fixed magnification factor.
Cameras with Live View have a benefit that it can boost the remaining light on the LCD display so there is a possibility to focus (or rather, move closer/farther away). However, that doesn't yet solve the shallow DOF. When you will only use the image to display it on the Web, then it is okay to close the aperture down to someting like f/11 or f/16. Doing that will lose a lot of fine detail to diffraction. On my Canon 1Ds3 the diffraction at the pixel level becomes noticeable at f/8, so if I need to produce large output, then the DOF will stay limited or I have to sacrifice micro detail.
When the subject is not moving you can use a software solution which allows to stack several images with different focus positions and fuse the sharpest parts of each image into a new composite. Currently there are a few contenders that allow to do such 'focus stacking'.
One possibility is to use the 'Enfuse' blending tool, which can either blend for dynamic range differences, or for focus differences. Potentially better results and an easie workflow can be achieved with Photoshop. There is also a program called 'Combine Z' (or M), but there seem to be some recurring artifacts that are hard to eliminate. There are also plugins for 'ImageJ' that can do focusstacking.
The top 2 programs at the moment seem to be 'Helicon Focus', and 'Zerene Stacker'. Both have very good feature sets and can produce excellent results, but within the limitations of the technology. Helicon Focus is a very mature program, and the Pro version allows to drive Canon cameras with Autofocus lenses while automatically stepping through the range. For the MP-E 65mm, which is a manual 'focus' lens, there is a possibility to let Helicon focus drive an expensive stepper motor driven focus rail, the 'StackShot' from Cognysis, that can move either the camera or the subject in very small steps.
Lot's of things to try and to read about, but first get the basic 65mm lens into your skill set. There are even people who successfully chase bugs in the field and manage to control the movement by the wind (by utilizing all the tricks there are such as shooting in the ealy morning when the bugs are not warmed up yet, and by manually positioning the subject in the focus plane instead of moving the camera).
Have fun, with this exploration of the micro-cosmos.
Cheers,
Bart
