HELICON FOCUS ALTERNATIVES ANDROID
HELICON FOCUS ALTERNATIVES SOFTWARE

By activating the advanced menus in CombineZP, there is an option under the 'Stack' menu to resize and align the photos in the stack. Scrolling through the original photos, I realised that altering the focus was also slightly changing the picture size, so nearby items seemed to move as you proceeded down the stack. It starts up in a basic mode, and you can import your 'stack' of photos. I found a free Windows program called CombineZP. Having taken a set of photos (or 'stack'), they then need to be copied to a PC for processing.

HELICON FOCUS ALTERNATIVES ANDROID

For best results, switch the App to use 'Camera2 API' if your Android version supports it.

You can also set it to start when you say 'Cheese', so you do not need to touch, and possibly move, the phone. You set the closest and furthest limits of the focus range required, and the number of photos to be taken. One of these is the ability to automatically take a series of photos for focus stacking. This App has a lot of interesting extra features that the App supplied with the phone does not. Then I found a free App called OpenCamera. I have a recent Android phone with a pretty good camera (OnePlus 7T) and a tripod fitment, but trying to take multiple photos, focused at different distances, without moving the phone was almost impossible.

HELICON FOCUS ALTERNATIVES SOFTWARE

Such software was expensive, but there are now free alternatives. Computer software is then used to stitch together the in-focus parts of each photo to build up a final photo that is all in focus. This involves taking a number of photographs of the same scene, each focused at a different distance from the camera. A good camera that can be 'stopped down' to very small aperture (f22 or better), good lighting and a long exposure can improve the depth of focus. Photographing model layouts is always tricky, especially the long, sweeping views which are problematic due to the limited depth of focus obtainable at close distances under indoor lighting.

Helicon focus alternatives