[Leica] CS4 Extended Depth of Field Trial

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 11:37 AM -0500 11/25/08, Leonard Taupier wrote:
>To me this process would only be useful to bring near and far away 
>points in focus when it couldn't be done in the camera. The sundial 
>photo should be made easily in the camera by stopping down the lens, 
>especially since the camera was on a tripod to start. Am I missing 
>something?
>
>Len
>

There are a couple of aspects to this. One is that the near and far 
points that are intended to be infocus are truly in focus, not just 
within the depth of field. In contrast to LF cameras with movements, 
you do not change a plane of focus, but you create a volume.

The second, and creatively much more interesting point is that you 
can keep the rest of the scene, namely those portions that aren't in 
the volume of sharp focus truly out of focus, which you can't by 
stopping down. You could make all your shots of the sundial at an 
aperture that keeps the background as blurry as you wish, say at f/2 
and then take 40 shots of the sundial to have a sharp volume that 
encloses the sundial.

There was (is) a program called Helicon Focus at

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfocus.html?focus_overview

that does the same thing. I was considering it, but in the end 
decided to save my money. I'm glad I did, since now CS4 can do 
something similar.

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    *            Henning J. Wulff
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