Great video James. I have had the same problem with focus stacking and blend manually. It does take longer but the results are so much better. Your photo is fantastic. Very interesting thanks you for sharing your process.
Thank you Bruce! Manual is definitely the way to go. Makes me want to re-evaulate images I used automatic modes for in the past. Glad you found this interesting 🙂
Excellent vlog James, really informative. I liked how you explained in detail the edit process but the main point I've taken away is making sure you/I have all throes images in the first instance! Thanks for sharing and great work as always.
Great video once again James. Really good info on the focus stacking, much appreciated, especially doing it at night, makes things a tad more difficult. I love how the D850 allows us to focus stack now, such an incredible camera. Cheers.
Cheers Adrian! Yeah night time shooting makes everything that much harder. It's a really nice camera feature which I'm using now all the time. It's not difficult to do manually but its lovely to just press a button and watch it go 🙂
Really great video James shows some good new techniques and you explained them very well, there are normally 100 ways to do the same thing in PS, but your manual stacking option seems perfect and very straight forward.. Nice image as well, would never have said that was the moon and not the sun.
Thanks very much! Hope the insights will be useful for you. Quite surreal how long exposures can turn night into day isn't it? The stars and lighthouse are the only real clues its at night
Great tutorial James. I never really use the auto blend method for focus stacking. As you say, it only really works out for simple stacks and even then I want to go in and check it at 100% so it's just as easy to do it myself with the brush tool the way you demonstrated. I must admit I've never stacked that many before, I think the most I ever did was 6, but then I'm not shooting at night and using a really big aperture like you were. Thanks for sharing
Cheers Ralph! I'm actually shocked at how poor the auto blend method is and how many photographers continue to push it as the way to focus stack. It gives nice results about 1 in 10 times for me. As you say shooting at f2.8 made the depth of field extremely narrow, probably didn't need 12 in the end but its always best to shoot more than needed 👍
Very nice James. A great in depth look and the result is lovely. I tend to go the very very lazy route for my focus stacks, but I like yours better as I don’t tend to really brush much myself. Still gotta give this moonrise thing a go. 🤔Cheers.
Thank you Diego! I've used the auto blending approach for a while but I'm just not happy with the results. The blends always feel very patchy. The manual method takes longer but it produces much smoother results. Definitely give it a go 👍
Really great video James, really enjoyed that and learnt something too about the focus stacking, something I should do more often for my landscapes to up my game a bit, just always forget to do certain things out in the field and realise when I get back and think "oh craps I forgot to do this" just like my trip to Glen Affric the shot of the lonely tree, why on earth I didn't put my grad filter on as the sun is blown out and I can't fix it now which is a real shame so a bit gutted about that, but you live and learn I guess. Well done and keep up the great videos 😀👍👍
Thanks Ryan! I get something wrong on basically every trip I go on. I can't recall a time where I feel I've ever 100% nailed it. I think that's just part of photography really and actually drives us on to improve. Appreciate your support 👍
Its a really good explanation of focus stacking. Its a really nice final image... but it does look like sunrise. As it was very dark when you were taking the photo's (taking into account that the video camera doesn't have the ability to adapt to subtle contrasts), surely there should be much more shadow on the dark side of the rocks/buildings and some subtle rim lighting on the moon side; or I've got my monitor far too bright and contrasty. I love the image but it screams post production. Something which you rightly criticized in the Instagram vlog. Believe me I'm not dissing you, I really like your work and simple honest presentation, but I think the night time stuff just looks like HDR.
Thanks Ian. Yeah you're right I had to process this image heavily but I don't think I had much alternative. Astrophotography almost always requires significant post processing due to challenging light conditions which push the camera to its very limits. The moon rise was especially tough. Huge dynamic range and depth of field challenges. I feel moonlight landscape photography is an under explored niche but its pretty much impossible to do it without pushing hard with processing, as the images just won't work otherwise unfortunately. I totally get what you're saying though and agree, there is a fine line between getting it right and pushing too far. Thanks for watching 🙂
I don't think the camera is the problem here. With so many layers of focus stacking, and the the high mega-pixel rate of the camera it can pick up all the fine detail. I was referring to the fall of light, the lack of depth of shadow and that the tone was too warm, colour saturation goes off a cliff edge once the sun has stopped illuminating the clouds (for me, all subjective opinion). Squint at the monitor and if you can still see the detail it shouldn't be there. Paul Compton and I are having quite an extended discussion about too many points of interest in a photo, but as I come from a pictorialist standpoint and most landscape photographers have more in common with Ansel Adams then I'm probably outnumbered. It has inspired me to try out night photography, but being further north than you I'll have to wait a few months. Thanks for replying, to what ostensibly was a challenging comment.
@@iainmc9859 no worries Iain. I didn't actually warm the image all that much. You tend to find when the moon is low on the horizon it can often produce a very warm light that quickly changes to silvery blue as it moves up into the sky. The moon was a fantastic orangey colour on that particular night. Shadows are a tough one, most of the foreground was technically in shadow so lift it too little and the rock pool wouldn't be visible, too much and it looks artificial. It's a balancing act / compromise. Appreciate your thoughts though. Cheers 👍
Yeah, to be honest I've probably forgotten what the moon looks like rising over the sea (atmospheric diffraction), too many mountains in the way. Its often crossed my mind, is there any place in Scotland that a mountain (600m high roughly in UK) is not visible (ignoring man-made structures obscuring the view). I can't actually think of anywhere. Happy for anyone to state a location, I'd go there just for the novelty value. Just keep shooting the Isle of Man and I'll be happy :-)
When you open the images in Photoshop from within lightroom and then save, it brings the combined image back into lightroom (if my memory serves me correctly). Thanks very much 👍
Nice one James. Do you save your corrected image as a layered PSD file before you merge all the layers in case you want to go back and work on a layer again?
Hi. Thank you for this. I've been wrestling with moonlight photos and this really helped. One question: with the supplementary photos (not in the focus stack) how did you take these without touching and slightly moving the camera, or can you set these all up in advance? Or can you change settings on a phone app or remote? Philip
Thanks Philip! Glad this helped. I locked my composition in and didnt move my camera at all. Therefore any settings changes had no real impact on the alignment of the images. Using the auto alignment feature in Adobe is a great way to eliminate any micro fluctuations between shot alignment too 👍
Oh man. I had a good laugh at the 'flexing your post-processing muscles' bit. It's a great final image, I was glad to see the behind-the-scenes on it. I've never really delved into focus stacking myself... I suppose one of these days I'll have to give it a bash. Thanks for this, James.
Cheers Brian! Haha there's nothing quite like poking fun at yourself. Glad you enjoyed it and hopefully this might be useful if you give it a go. Let me know how you get on when you do 👍👍👍
Well you first need to capture the images focused at the various points in your scene. One you have the images just follow the approach shown in this video 👆
