Anyone use rendering for photos?

Very well put Ray. I will have to give this method a go. It might be particularly useful on toned coins where you need to "fill in" the shadows that almost always crop up somewhere on a coins surface, even with a dozen lights.

 

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To make it clear I am only referring to focus stacking. I have read a couple articles on the subject and they all say it is very important for all images used to have the same lighting and zoom, the only thing that changes from shot to shot should be the distance your focal point is from the camera. The software only takes the focused portions of the images and matches them up so the entire shot is focused.
Modern software and computers now can run comparisons and resize/fill holes/blend any inconsistencies but the final goal is only to increase the depth of focus to get a completely accurate representation of the subject that is not blurred and does not have to be artificially manipulated to sharpen the image.

 

Could you post a first middle and last for the shots used in the stack to demonstrate to those that might not get what is happening.. and I am curious as well, lol.

 

I didn't keep that stack, as I usually delete the original images pretty soon after "rendering" an acceptable final image. But here is one I just took that shows the concept. These are not adjusted for levels, sharpness, etc so are just raw images and a raw stack made from them. This stack was 15 images...

Final Image:


Lowest focus (on deepest point on the field)


Middle focus (image 8 out of 15):


Highest focus (on highest point of the devices)

 

Thanks, at the moment my little digital micro just doesn't have the quality to properly show it on a coin, lol. I also have read about 3d rendering programs which is why I mistakenly used rendering in the subject for the thread. I have not tried that yet but it looks like it might be interesting. Maybe if I ever win a high end DSLR on quibids, lol.

 

The quality of image in these high power stacks has little to do with the camera, and everything to do with the lens used. You can put a high quality objective onto pretty much any camera and get these results. Adapting can be a bit tricky but you can do it.

 

True, the lens does matter the most but if you only have a point and shoot they don't really come with true macro capability. I did have a pretty good Pentax X5 that produced great shots in it's super macro mode. It was better than what I am using at the moment, but I sold it on ebay shortly after I got it, lol. With a good macro lens you can get wonderful shots on a reliability low MP camera. Stacking just fixes that whole depth of focus problem you get with magnification in general.

 

What you end up doing is what is called "lens stacking". You can put a high quality objective onto the end of your camera lens and it will have magnification equal to the ratio of the focal lengths. The camera lens (point and shoot, DSLR, whatever) is focused near infinity, so any lens will do and its quality is not so important. It's difficult to do on a P&S that retracts its lens when off, or on one that doesn't have filter or add-on lens threads, but it can still be done...

 

Here is what I have been generating using photo stacking. Instead of changing the focus of the lens manually I put slider dimmers on my 2 lamps. By changing the lighting from one lamp and the other lamp it causes the auto focus on my camera to pick up different points as being in focus. This is the result.