Method for separating stacks?

[TwoWheeler]

I am looking for a good way to separate multiple stacks. I've heard of (and used) the "take a shot of your hand or the lens cap" technique, but that means turning off focus stacking in the menu (unless I want 50 shots of my lens cap) and then turning it back on again. Too fiddly.

I've only played with creating folders once or twice and it seemed pretty painful, but maybe I'm missing something or need to revisit it...

I suppose I could wait a couple of minutes between "sets" and work off the timestamps, but I am not that patient.

What I would really like is if "focus bracketing" could be set to "on" in my C3 setting - then I wouldn't have to remember to turn it on,(just set the number of shots) and between sets, I could just switch to C1 or C2 and take my one throwaway shot....but unfortunately that's not the case.

 

[Nick L]

Nothing clever from me, I reset the count so I start at 0000, then when downloaded to the PC I use fastone to create a set of folders 1 to 20 then copy the stack sets to the folders (I normally remove the shots from the start and the end of the stack before I copy). Say you are shooting 40 per set its easy to work out the sets, hope that helps

 

[Bryan Conner]

I am looking for a good way to separate multiple stacks. I've heard of (and used) the "take a shot of your hand or the lens cap" technique, but that means turning off focus stacking in the menu (unless I want 50 shots of my lens cap) and then turning it back on again. Too fiddly.

I've only played with creating folders once or twice and it seemed pretty painful, but maybe I'm missing something or need to revisit it...

I suppose I could wait a couple of minutes between "sets" and work off the timestamps, but I am not that patient.

What I would really like is if "focus bracketing" could be set to "on" in my C3 setting - then I wouldn't have to remember to turn it on,(just set the number of shots) and between sets, I could just switch to C1 or C2 and take my one throwaway shot....but unfortunately that's not the case.

I use a Canon EOS R, so I don't have the luxury of automated focus bracketing/stacking, so I either shoot my hand or the ground etc. But, I guesss you could also make a one second video, with your video settings on the lowest quality. I know that some cameras offer a voice memo function, so you could add a memo to the last frame of the series. Or maybe give the last frame of a series a certain rating.

 

[Dean Wilson]

I am looking for a good way to separate multiple stacks. I've heard of (and used) the "take a shot of your hand or the lens cap" technique, but that means turning off focus stacking in the menu (unless I want 50 shots of my lens cap) and then turning it back on again. Too fiddly.

My method is to take a shot of the . Turn on my stacking and when stacking is completed take another shot.

When the camera is turned on Focus Stacking isn't enabled, so it's not an issue....for me. I do this for pano's as well.

 

[TwoWheeler]

My method is to take a shot of the

I’ll have to try that. How soon can you send me your hand? Or do I have to shoot a stack, drive there, take a picture of your hand, drive back and resume shooting? That might not be ideal, because the light might change in the interim.

A big part of the problem is you can’t have “focus stacking ON” assigned to a custom setting - otherwise I’d just switch from C3 to C1 or C2, take a “marker” shot and switch back to C3 without the arduous task of actually having to turn bracketing off and on again. (It’s #2 in my MYMENU, but geez that’s too much work! ).

I added a shortcut to “create a folder” to MYMENU - I’ll see if actually having to create a folder for each stack offends my delicate sensibilities.

I suppose “slowing the hell down” would enable me to separate them by timestamps, but that whole concept is alien to me.

Compounding this is that I do the stack in Helicon and then only import the resultant DNGs to Crapture One - that way I don’t have all the photos in the stack that I don’t give a rodent’s posterior about cluttering up my library. Trying to figure out where stuff starts and stops in Helicon is kind of a pain because each time you click on an image it takes one or two eternities for the image to load.

 

[Dean Wilson]

I don't need any C-modes. Just keep shooting Hand~Images~Hand, and then relocate then repeat. Of course, if I'm stacking Astro, the hand isn't useful. It is easy to discern Noise Images (Dark Frames) from Base Images. I don't have a tracker, so...it's the long way around.

 

[TwoWheeler]

I don't need any C-modes. Just keep shooting Hand~Images~Hand, and then relocate then repeat. Of course, if I'm stacking Astro, the hand isn't useful. It is easy to discern Noise Images (Dark Frames) from Base Images. I don't have a tracker, so...it's the long way around.

I use C3 as “macro mode”, as it has a bunch of other crap set for doing macro stacks - including a 10 sec self timer - but I’m starting to see that what mode I’m in is kind of ear elephant. It comes down to turning off focus bracketing so I don’t end up with a stack of lens cap shots.

The reason I was hung up on using the mode button is that I was hoping it would be as simple as one press of my MFN button to access another mode, take a throwaway, then press the MFN button twice to return to macro mode. But that appears to be a dead end, since “focus bracketing on” can’t be part of a custom setting, nor can it be assigned to a button so I could use it as a toggle.

I also tried assigning a folder to a custom mode so that my bursts in my C2 “moving things” would end up in their own folder and my stacks in C3 Macro Mode would end up in their own folder, but all I did was make a hash of things and my default folder is now called “100 Burst” for everything.

I think Canon did this deliberately just to piss me off.

 

[TwoWheeler]

So to answer my own damned question about whether there is some clever way to separate bracketed stacks without a lot of faffing about, the answer is:

"No, suck it up Princess".

I can either turn off Focus Bracketing between stacks and take a throwaway shot - which means having to turn it back on and reset the number of shots each time (unless I want the default 50) - create a new folder each time, or wait a minute or two.

Apparently you can't set "Focus Bracketing On" to be default to a custom setting or assign it to that useless "Rate" button, because it's expecting you to set the number of shots and/or the step size each time?

Dunno. Just one more thing that makes me irrationally angry in a world chock full of things that make me irrationally angry.

So, here, have a stacked Catalpa blossom that confirmed the above:

• Join to view EXIF data.

 

[TwoWheeler]

To further add: if you go to create a folder, it will take the current folder name and increment it by one - a somewhat workable solution.

Then, when you format the card after you pull all the images off, it wipes all the folders you created, so you can easily do it again next time.

 

[AntonLargiader]

Can you assign a button to "Register/recall shooting func"? That may allow you to shoot a single shot of a hand or whatever without getting out of the stacking configuration you have.

Also, if you press the shutter button a second time I think it cancels your stack. So you could start a new stack with your hand in front, and press again after the first frame.

 

[TwoWheeler]

Can you assign a button to "Register/recall shooting func"?

I’ll have to look into that.

Also, if you press the shutter button a second time I think it cancels your stack. So you could start a new stack with your hand in front, and press again after the first frame.

This might be the simplest solution of all.

If it works, I’ll name my next pet after you.