Been reading about this recently. How do you find Helicon in terms of user friendliness / ease of use?
As a curiosity, have you tried comparing a high fstop vs stacked focus?
In my mind it would seem like you would get greater sharpness with stacked focus.
Stacking is a neat trick but is fussy and takes real practice and patience. If you are serious about wanting the best results for product work like this (as in you can justify the expense for the camera gear) use a tilt shift/ PC (perspective control) lens and get it in a single shot.
A PC lens will give you simple controls akin to a view camera (large format camera) to control perspective (shift/rise/fall) and focus control (swings/tilts) which is how product photography has been done for decades. A real view camera (be it film or digital back) is the ideal way to have absolute control as you can use all movements simultaneously, but the DSLR PC lenses are a great tool and get you 80% there.
They aren’t cheap, but they do the job optically without relying on software to figure things out for you.
I use them on my Nikon’s for architectural work (19 & 24mm) and (45 & 85mm) for quick product work in the studio and even environmental portraits (when the architectural context is just as important as the person in the picture). Canon makes a line of them as well and adapters are available for use on Sony mirrorless.
a pro Architectural tog came to my work. The tilt/shift images were great. No converging lines, everything straight. It looked brilliant. Theryre expensive though.
Stacking is a neat trick but is fussy and takes real practice and patience. If you are serious about wanting the best results for product work like this (as in you can justify the expense for the camera gear) use a tilt shift/ PC (perspective control) lens and get it in a single shot.
Still more technical shit for more layers.
I’m sorry. There’s just part of me that’s a Luddite. All the high tech gimmicks are just draining after a while.
I’ll shut up now.
Sorry.
Leica M3, Leica M3, Leica M3.... (ah, I’m better now)
