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Nice work Marty. 

If I may.  I'd try and move the camera a tad lower.  The scene seems captured  from the middle of the road and 15' in the air, even with the top of  the loco.  I might be led to believe it was taken from an over pass further down the road but then it is too low for that.

Marc

Looks good

Nice shot!

Is the focus on the first row of silifor tufts intended to be a little soft? I am not meaning to be critical, I know you are just playing with the software, just curious.

When you do the final shot be sure to have a few fall leaves strewn on the road left from the corealis of cars driving through! Its one of the reasons I am 10x more likely to get a ticket in October..

Seriously, wonderful shot.. will be a serious winner when you finish the scene!

I am dying to play with the software!

Chris

Is that a U25? yes, answered my own question (http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=336883)

Can't really lower the camera

Can't really lower the camera since it's resting on the layout surface in this shot! Sounds like I need to zoom back a little then crop closer to the bottom on the engine (thereby lowering the "height of eye") in post production.

Thanks for the feedback.

Marty

Yes, the weeds look a little

Yes, the weeds look a little soft - one of the things I need to do when I reshoot the picture is focus on more key points - maybe 8 or 10 images to stack as opposed to 5 -- in other words, focus on the weeds in foreground, the RR crossing sign, front corner of engine, side of engine, big tree, the trees to the left by the bend in the road, and one or two spots at Jake's gas. I'm finding you need to get a lot of focus points (essentially one image focused on a specific point in the scene) on things like signs and anything with a "hard edge." That includes the weeds.

I'll be sure to add some leaves to the road - that will be a nice touch and might help me avoid adding a lot of striping.

The U25 is an Atlas model that I modified to match the MEC prototypes - I believe it was featured in an MR Paint Shop model a while back. Never understood why Atlas has never done the U25 in MEC.

I've had a terrible time when

I've had a terrible time when trying to do multiple photos for Helicon focus by focusing on the various key elements in a scene. My best luck seems to come when I start at close focus (where the closest item is focused) and minimally twist the focus ring (on my Tamron 17-55 that slightly less then one 'knurl' on the focus ring). Sometimes that means I've got 20 pictures to glue together but Helicon seems to work with this ok.  I also shoot at around f11 (with the Tamron lens on my APC sensor Canon 40D) which gives each (sub)picture a bit more depth of field itself but makes for better sharpness (with that lens) than I'd get at f22 or f32. By taking the 'disciplined' approach, most of the time I don't end up with something out of focus. But oh brother does that result in a lot of pictures! Good thing I've got a big flash card!

Cheers,

Charlie

Interesting resurrection

Fun to see this old photography post pop up again.

I have experimented with a couple of freeware programs but found them poorly designed and not always predictable.

Is Helicon Focus still the premier focus-stacking program, or should I be looking at something else?