Digital BW, The Print

Paul,
   I have been using Helicon Focus for years.  I commonly expose 6 and up to 30 frames.  I have been very pleased with the results.  I photograph flowers exclusively.
   Although I have ALWAYS used a tripod HF would not work acceptably when I was scanning film.  The registration was not good enough.  Using a digital camera it works fine most of the time.  There cannot be any movement in the subject (I work exclusively with macros of flowers where a slight breeze is a storm).  If the depth of field is too deep and/or steep HF loses control/ goes haywire or whatever.
   Compositing of pictures used to take me something like 6-20 hours.  Now with HF I can watch each composite taking place, see which exposure might be throwing it off and have the result in less than 30 seconds.  
   I have emailed with the developer in the Ukraine but do not have a personal relationship with him.  However I feel he has a tremendous product.

BertGF

P.S. On my website www.cameraflora.com the lower galleries are all done with a digital camera and HF.
    

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "pr_roark" <pr_roark@...> wrote:
>
> (I hope this is not too off-topic.)
> 
> I've been experimenting with Helicon focus, a program that will combine multiple images that were focused on different points of the subject.  I have combined frames manually in Photoshop to get better depth of field in my landscape images for some time.  I'd tried an earlier version of Helicon and had decided not to used it, but Luminous Landscape published a good review of the latest version.  There is a free trial period for Helicon software.  So, giving it a test drive is reasonably easy.
> 
> The image I tried today (and gave up on) was composed of 2 focus zones and taken with the Canon 5d2, 35 mm lens.   
> 
> The problems included artifacts in the sky and moving the detail of the image around such that the artifacts could not easily be cured by cloning in information from the original scenes.  The details were also noticeably softened at 100%.
> 
> Earlier, I'd tried a shot with moving water in it.  These types of programs usually have trouble with that too, and it did.
> 
> So, it's back to manual work.  While 2 images are not too bad to stitch together, more is a pain. 
> 
> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
>