Focus stacking with the Panasonic Lumix G95 18 September 2019

Current model Panasonic M43 and fixed lens cameras have a feature called 4K Photo. This can be used for a range of purposes including pre-burst and focus stacking which is the subject of this brief post.

When photographing small things which are not flat it can be a challenge to render sharp all the parts of the subject which we want to appear sharp and clear in the photo.  

This is because when working in close the depth of field becomes very shallow. We can close down the lens aperture to increase depth of field but this can lead to sharpness loss from diffraction at the iris diaphragm.

One way to resolve this problem is focus stacking.

This is a process by which we make a series of pictures each focussed slightly further from the camera than the other then combine just the in focus parts of each frame.

This can be done manually at the capture stage and the images subsequently combined in Photoshop.

But with Panasonic 4K photo there is a quicker way and it all happens in camera.

In practice the procedure is really simple. The camera and subject must be perfectly still so a tripod or similar camera support is essential.

For the photo above I used the Lumix 12-60mm f3.5-5.6 lens at 60mm, Aperture priority at f5.6, ISO 200.

Turn the Drive Mode Dial to the [Mountain/flower] icon, frame up the subject, half press the shutter button to confirm that the AF system can cover the subject then fully depress the shutter button. The capture process takes about one second and saves the resultant image stack as an MP4 file.

Now touch the appropriate icon on the screen and follow the on screen prompts for the camera to create a single focus stacked image. This takes a couple of seconds and produces an approximately 8 Mp (3328x2496 pixels) JPG file with everything miraculously in focus.

In my tests I have found the quality of the resultant images to be very good.

This capability can be very useful with a range of little subjects. The only real limitation is that they must hold quite still for the second or so which the capture process takes.