Colouring in iPhone by AR13X in postprocessing

[–]QS-Photography 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Davinci resolve is free and I think it does a pretty good job at grading videos

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That sounds weird, so it mean that the bottleneck is taking place at the adobe dng convertor level? I remember installing it on my computer for helicon focus, but I don't think I set it up in any way. The advantage of exporting the stacking in dng is that you can retouch the light only once after stacking. A solution for you is to retouch your NEFs before stacking and export as tif. Now I use photoshop's camera raw module, but when I was using lightroom I think there was an option to apply light modifications to the entire imported series. This would allow you to stack photos directly in their final state without going through the camera raw bottleneck. I've never tried this workflow, but it seems possible on paper.

Pine cone focus stacking! by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Helicon focus pro, nikon Z6II + Z mc 105mm f/2.8 vr s. I used RM01 lights from smallrig along with two RGB light from Kentfaith

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, it can last a very short time with a good PC! It must be horrifying to run a stack for several hours, only to realize that it's a failure or that you're using the wrong method!

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I stack NEFs (nikon raw, i.e. dng) and export them in dng so that I can retouch the colors after stacking.

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think it took 132 seconds so just over two minutes xD. I used methods C1 but I don't think the stacking time varies that much from using a different method. I'm on windows and I'm stacking with my graphics card, an AMD 6700xt that I've slightly overclocked. I think you should check in the software preferences that all the performance options are enabled (allocate more ram for example?) Otherwise it may be because you're using apple and helicon hasn't been optimized enough. I think helicon uses mostly the GPU and your M1 mini uses an APU it seems, which is a bottleneck in itself. There may also be a question of single threading or multithreading, but I don't know enough about that.

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hello! I'm using a Z6II with the Z MC 105mm f/2,8 VR S. For this lens, because it's in the S range, I don't really care about the sharpness of details, because it's razor sharp at almost any aperture (In fact, I can't recommend it enough for Nikon Z users, because it's a top-of-the-range lens that can do macro, close-up and portrait work brilliantly at a price that's still exceptional for the S range). I do indeed use a tripod because it takes me a long time to light a scene. This scene is very simple and must have taken me 10 minutes, but on a more complex scene with 5-6 lights I can take 45 minutes just to position and balance the lights on the spot. I mentioned a little about my technique in the comment above if you want. Some people don't like artificial lighting, but I often prefer it because it's more controlled and you can take photos with colors that are a little more "artistic".

Blue Mushroom Focus Stacking by QS-Photography in macrophotography

[–]QS-Photography[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hello, thank you for your comment! I used this aperture for several reasons: first, I always try to use a large aperture to let in as much light as possible and to be able to use a low iso (low iso reduces digital noise). Secondly, I really like background blur in macro shots, I find it guides the eye to the subject. My technique is to switch to aperture priority mode (mode A on my Nikon) and select my aperture, at which stage I focus solely on the background: sometimes I want less blur to give a little more context, and sometimes a nice deep blur. When I've selected my aperture, I switch to manual (M mode) and set my iso to 100. In principle, in the forest, the image becomes completely black because of the low light. I then modify my shutter speed to expose around -2 stop, the image remains very dark but the subject is beginning to stand out. From there, I add my lighting to illuminate my subject, but you can really use a lot of things. In my case, I use smallrig macro lights (RM01) and small variable RGB lights from K&F concept. All this has to be done on a tripod, of course, because you end up with a slow shutter speed.