Focus bracketing on iPhone for greater depth of field (2020) | Hacker News Reader

Focus bracketing on iPhone for greater depth of field (2020)

camerapixels.app

10 pointsretro_guy19 comments

It's fascinating to know that "focus stacking" is a thing that's possible and that there's an app to produce the stack... but at the same time it seems like waaay too much work.

If you're into precise photography to the extent you'd want to do this, it seems like you'd just be using a DSLR with an appropriate lens in the first place?

It reminds me of that trick where you can use a Brita filter to turn cheap vodka into "expensive" vodka, but it uses up your Brita filter in the process and it turns out it's more cost-effective (and smoother-tasting) to just buy the more expensive vodka in the first place.

In other words, just because you can doesn't mean it's a recommended workflow...

Some cameras do this automatically, and will adjust the focusing distance in steps in order to obtain a larger depth of field.

It's mostly used in macro photography, where the depth of field is less than a millimeter thin, although it's sometimes used for landscapes too if there are elements in the composition that are very close.

As for lenses that have more depth of field, having more depth of field requires a smaller shutter, which means that less light enters to hit the sensor. A shutter that's too small will also be less sharp due to diffraction. So in practice, it's necessary to do focus stacking in certain scenarios.

Is there an alternative to photoshop for merging the pictures? Can ffmpeg do it? Or a bit of python code perhaps?

FFMPEG and ImageMagik would be a stretch but one could do with this openCV/Python. Of course easier said than done. You need to deal with image alignment, contrast changes and some math to get things looking clean. Having it all bundled on the phone is nice.

Focus stacking software, such as:

Picolay

Helicon Focus

Enfuse/Enblend (CLI)

What about imagemagick/graphicsmagick?

Missed opportunity of showing an animation of the frames used.

Great result! Sad however, that the iPhone takes really poor photos by default without additional software :/ (iPhone 14 Pro is super blurry)

I’ve been looking at older images in my photo library, and have to admit that with recent years, iPhone images look really … odd and over-processed. I think it started during the 11 Pro. Older photos just have a different feel to them. Every year, Apple seems to lean harder on computational photography tricks, and I can’t say if it’s right or wrong, just that I don’t like the resulting photos. You get used to the look somewhat, but then you scroll back in time and see much more pleasing photos from years-old phones.

Well, people see professionally edited photos and want that. Apple provides that (to an extend). The thing is, it's near automatic software, which is different from a professionally edited photo, which I believe is still a manual process.

But I hate it too.

It doesn't reflect the landscapes that I saw.

It's wrong.

Uncanny valley.

DXOMARK considers it to be the 8th best smartphone camera they've ever tested, if that's disappointingly poor for you then what do you consider to be a high quality smartphone camera? Maybe yours is faulty/defective?

So there are 7 cameras that are better. There are only 6 flagship phones of any merit (Apple, Xiomi, Samsung, Huawei, Oppo, Google), so 8th place puts it behind the last generation Pixel phone. Seriously, while the iPhone is a superior to the Android flagships in most respects, but if you’ve used a Pixel then the iPhone camera is a clear step down.

I actually do use a Pixel phone. I still think it's a bit hyperbolic to describe something as "sad" and "really poor" on the basis that it ranks slightly lower than another top manufacturer's previous flagship.

No, no, it's really bad, pictures get so blurry that you can't read the text when taking picture of a document for example.

Similar example from Reddit that describes well the issue: https://i.redd.it/14-plus-cannot-take-photos-close-up-expect...

(I have a Pro model, but this specific photo is from a Plus)

The "bad" photo there is clearly focused on the table

Yep, they probably accidentally tapped the edge of the screen, telling the phone to focus that part. Lots of people don’t know you can tap on the live image to change the focus.

In such cases like on the picture, and the ones I observe (blurry pictures), tapping on the object barely makes it appear into focus. Which means there is a problem somewhere in the focus functionality (either software or hardware).

Manually adjusting it works though, but it requires lot of efforts and third-party software.

The post processing, even with ProRAW, can have an over sharpened look to it. 3rd party software solves this issue.

I purchased a DSLR because my 13 Pro just didn’t take very good scenery pictures. I still use it for quick photos.

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