These units are used in conjunction with the camera’s autofocus motor to determine a spot in the motor that relates to a point in space. The numbers you see on the left hand side of the focus stack tool are called MCUs, or Motor Control Units. The Focus Stack tool can be found on the XF body’s top touch screen by swiping left through the available tools. Navigate to the Focus Stack Tool On The XF Remember, don't worry about depth of field. Chances are it’s In the middle of the lens between f/5.6 to f/11. If you don’t know what the sharpest aperture is for the lens you’re using, take some test images with equivalent exposures at different apertures. That being the case, for the best image quality, choose the sharpest aperture your lens can give you, like f/8 or f/11. Once you’ve made the decision to focus stack an image you’re no longer using aperture for depth of field, you’re using it for sharpness. Plus its not very often that a wide open aperture is your lens’s sharpest option. Shooting at a wide open aperture will result in several more images taken and stacked, adding unnecessary strain on your machine. Also, just because you can shoot a focus stacked image with a wide open aperture and achieve a final “in-focus” image, doesn’t mean you should. You could stack those images, but the final image would be equally soft front to back. Since you’re going to be stacking your images, there isn’t a need to shoot with the smallest aperture your lens will give you since that will introduce softness due to diffraction. The final image will only be as sharp as the “in-focus” area of one of your images. It’s important to remember that focus stacking doesn’t add sharpness. Something to consider here as much as possible is your aperture. If you’re using strobes, make sure they are ready to fire. Next, you’ll want to have all of your exposure settings dialed in. You’ll also want to make sure you have autofocus turned on. First, you’ll want to have your subject in front of the camera, obviously. You’ll need an XF camera body and any Phase One IQ series digital back (IQ1, 2, 3, and 4 are all compatible). The Focus Stack Tool is a simple one to use, but it’s important to have a few things straight before you jump right in. While certainly not necessary for all types of images, macro and still life photographers will especially appreciate the automated Focus Stack Tool, though landscape and architectural photographers may also find the built in Focus Stack Tool in the XF body an extremely welcome feature. Focus Stacking helps alleviate this habit of physics. The more resolution you add, the better you can render the not-perfectly-in-focus areas in an image, effectively reducing the amount of overall sharpness. As resolution increases acceptable sharpness decreases. Using a focus stack to capture an image is ideal for medium format camera systems since their high resolution sensors render everything, including out of focus areas, so well. Phase One's built in Focus Stack Tool for the XF Camera system is perfect for putting this technique into practice in a predictable, repeatable way. This technique is particularly useful for macro subjects, but it can also be used in landscape, still life, or for essentially any non-moving subject. Focus stacking boils down to the practice of taking multiple images at several different focusing points across the subject and “stacking” them together in software to create an image with perfect focus front to back that would have been impossible to create with just a single image (or using front tilt as in a view camera at 150MP resolution).
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