Orchid from 4K photo

[davidedric]

Hi,

I am continuing to play with Panasonic's 4K mode.

If you missed my earlier post, in Panasonic's G7 and GX8 cameras, the latest firmware added an interesting feature to their 4K video mode. On shutter depression, the camera finds as many significant points of focus as it can, from front to back, and then shoots a short 4K video with each successive frame focused on one of the pre-detected planes (you can watch the focus points being selected on the rear screen before the video fires).

You can then extract individual 8mp images from each frame of the video (it's very easy in Photoshop), and in this case I have loaded them into Helicon Focus focus stacker to produce the final image. The original was shot at f2.8 - which is the widest I have - to try and make the camera work hard!

Here's the result, with a little post processing in Lightroom.

Dave

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured, I like the background on this over your other experiment, puts the emphasis solely on the flower.

[chauncey]

That is fascinating Dave...what lens was used, how many focus points were selected,
what is size of final image?

[davidedric]

That is fascinating Dave...what lens was used, how many focus points were selected,
what is size of final image?

The lens was the Panasonic 12-35 f2.8, I think at around 30mm, on a tripod.

It uses Panasonic's "Depth From Defocus" technology, which is fast enough to enable it to refocus between video frames, which is pretty impressive.

So far as I can tell, I'm still learning and it all happens pretty quickly, the camera always takes video which equates to 25 frames. So far, it's never needed all of those, so it seems to tag some either end. You have to decide which to pass to the focus stacker (which is pretty easy). From memory, I used frames 5 to 20, so 15 frames. The final image is 8mp, the same as the individual frames.

Obviously, the same could be achieved manually with focus rails, but this is a lot easier and faster. Panasonic are hinting at 8K video in the not too distant future - that could add another dimension.

Dave

[Wavelength]

very beautiful.......

[Kaye Leggett]

It's lovely when a bit of playing pays off - this is delightful.

[bnnrcn]

It looks super

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Dave,

This is a better result due to the background.

Obviously, the same could be achieved manually with focus rails, but this is a lot easier and faster. Panasonic are hinting at 8K video in the not too distant future - that could add another dimension.

Yes, this might be the next big firmware enhancement from various camera manufacturers (unless Panasonic have a tight patent) - the engineering, electronics and processing ought to be relatively straight forward.

Although it works by 'shooting a 4K movie', I suspect it may not be captured at the standard movie frames per second figure, well, it doesn't really need to be. If they can capture the focus sweep at 24 or 30 fps, all well and good, but I don't see why it needs to - you're not going to want to 'watch' it in the traditional manner. Out of interest; how long does it take Dave? (one second, two seconds?)


I guess the limitation/development on HD vs 4k vs 8K is caused by processing and/or buffer size issues, recent advances in the latest generations of cameras suggest the manufacturers have been looking to address those, so the future sounds promising if the technologies come together (in a way that they see a profit in).

That said, the sensor obviously needs to have sufficient native resolution and 8k (for TV = 7680 x 4320) requires over 33MP

Cheers, Dave

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Nice shot Dave.
Interesting way of getting it too.
Now, if this had been me, since I don't know focus stacking from pancakes, I'd be trying to get this shot by making it a long exposure taken at f22 or so.

[Manfred M]

Interesting Dave - the one thing that you did not mention though is the main downside of this approach. A 4K video frame is ~ 4000 pixels x 2000 pixels, so you are looking at an image that is about 8MP. The GX7 has a resolution of 18MP and the GX8 has a resolution of 20MP, so you are getting an image that is significantly smaller than what you normally get out of your camera.

Display it on a computer screen; no big deal, but if you are planning to print a larger image, it does become more of an issue. Not too many people I know would go out and buy a 8MP camera...

[dje]

Beautiful shot Dave. The technology has worked well but the lighting also looks good.

Dave

[davidedric]

Although it works by 'shooting a 4K movie', I suspect it may not be captured at the standard movie frames per second figure, well, it doesn't really need to be. If they can capture the focus sweep at 24 or 30 fps, all well and good, but I don't see why it needs to - you're not going to want to 'watch' it in the traditional manner. Out of interest; how long does it take Dave? (one second, two seconds?)

Hi Dave,

So far as I can tell, it does seem to be captured at whatever fps you have set, in this case 30 fps. You can watch the video in the traditional manner, though there isn't much point It's pretty much impossible to say how long it takes. The initial focus scan takes maybe two seconds, and I think you then get around 1 second of video.

The technique for extracting frames from video using Photoshop is described here https://fstoppers.com/photoshop/lear...ny-video-29549

I'm not advocating this as a way of producing wonderful images (though they ain't bad), just sugesting it's an interesting development and exploitation of what's possible with today's technology.

Dave

[DanK]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting. I agree with Manfred's point, but still, it's fascinating. The stack looks very clean to me.

[davidedric]

Display it on a computer screen; no big deal, but if you are planning to print a larger image, it does become more of an issue

Absolutely right of course. I have printed A4, and it looks ok to me. I am not saying this will replace ff stills, but I think it is an interesting conjunction of 4K video, DFD focusing, and "post focus" firmware.

Is this sort of capability limited to mirrorless systems? I have no idea!

Dave

[Manfred M]

Absolutely Dave. I'm going to have to upgrade the firmware on my GX7 when I get home and play around with it.

I'm not aware of any other camera manufacturer that has implemented this functionality. Any of the camera companies could do so, as all of them support video. I suspect DSLRs would have to do this in LiveView to eliminate any lag in shooting the burst.

[dje]

Hi

Although it works by 'shooting a 4K movie', I suspect it may not be captured at the standard movie frames per second figure, well, it doesn't really need to be. If they can capture the focus sweep at 24 or 30 fps, all well and good, but I don't see why it needs to - you're not going to want to 'watch' it in the traditional manner. Out of interest; how long does it take Dave? (one second, two seconds?)

My guess is that the frames are captured individually as the camera steps through the different focus points (at a rate much lower than a typical frame rate) and then the frames are "packaged" into a 4K video file, probably for the convenience of handling one file only. The frame rate flagged in the video file wouldn't really matter as the individual frames will be extracted in PS later. The only reason for 4K is to get a fairly high res image.

Fascinating technology. I read somewhere that this feature was meant originally for getting the best focussed shot after the event but that focus stacking has become perhaps it's strongest point of appeal.

Dave

[IzzieK]

Thanks for the link, Dave...I like your image stack here. Very neat. I might want to try that...