This is the lens produced from 1969-1979. It’s a hard-core pre-AI model, and was tested on the D5000, which Nikon specifically states is incompatible with this camera. Guess they never tried it. Did you know that this was the lens used to film the battle cruiser in the opening scene of the original Star Wars movie? George Lucas was after the maximum quality he could get, and he got it. They moved the lens over the model of the ship on a motor-driven slide, instead of moving the ship past the lens. It was filmed by Richard Edlund, who also created the opening scene for Star Trek, where the starship Enterprise whizzes past, and he worked on Raiders of the Lost Ark as well. Richard got several Oscars in his career, and was always a big fan of Nikon. Nikon built this lens with supreme mechanical precision; it works as well today as it did when it was brand new. The MTF50 measurements presented below, being produced from a 12MP camera, don’t look as high as more modern high-resolution sensors. The problem is, though, that the lens won’t fit on those cameras. Focus As smooth as smooth can be, but totally manual. I actually dropped this lens onto a granite boulder when I was on a hike in the 80’s, but it still works perfectly. A moment etched into my memory. Not many lenses would have survived that treatment. A word about the D5000 here. They have an “electronic range finder focus" manual focus scale in addition to the “idiot dot” focus confirmation. Ironically, the premium range finder focus scale is unavailable while using this manual-focus lens, and all you get is the idiot dot. How’s that for a camera design? The lens focuses from infinity to half-life-size, but it can focus down to life-size if you use the PK-3 ring that it comes with. This is probably the most premium focus scale ever produced on a non-cinema lens, since precision and accuracy were what this lens design was all about. 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor on D5000 55mm Micro-Nikkor in full regalia on PB-4 bellows Check out this shot. That’s the PB-4 bellows with the lens reverse-mounted for maximum sharpness when going beyond life-size. I got this equipment back in the day when figuring out exposure for slides would put hair on your chest. This shows the following: BR-2 ring to mount the lens in reverse, using the 52mm filter threads. The lens is sharper reverse-mounted when using magnifications beyond life-size. BR-3 ring mounted on the rear of the lens to permit keeping a 52mm filter over the lens, in addition to protecting the rear portion of the lens and acting as a lens hood. BR-4 ring to keep the lens opened at maximum aperture until you take the shot. AR-4 release (one cable fits into the BR-4, the other cable threads onto the camera shutter release (e.g. Nikon F2 shutter) to coordinate stopping the lens down prior to tripping the shutter. PB-4 bellows, which features tilt-shift controls and of course holds the slide-copy and film strip attachment up front. It also has click-stops to hold the camera either horizontal or vertical. (Slide copy attachment not shown). I have separate attachments to mount flashes up front on the bellows, but it’s typically easier to just use a card and bounce flash from the camera-mounted flash. Resolution Testing These tests were done using a Nikon D5000 (12 MP) with unsharpened RAW format. Resolution is a 2-dimensional thing. The tests that follow show you how resolution varies throughout the frame. Also, the sagittal direction is really, really good. The meridional direction isn’t as good, but is still better than most lenses. I use a (free!) program called MTF Mapper from here to measure lens resolution. The download site also has files for printing out the resolution targets (mine are A0 size on heavy glossy paper (‘satin’ finish seems to work just as well), dry-mounted onto a board). This program is covered in more detail in my MTF Mapper Cliff’s Notes article. The software is comparable to ‘Imatest’ in the quality of the MTF measurements, and it uses the “slanted edge” technology similar to ‘Imatest’, also. I can’t thank the author of MTF Mapper, Frans van den Bergh, enough. Visit his site and give him the praise he deserves. The chart design used for resolution tests orients all of the little black squares to be ‘slanted’ but they’re generally aligned in meridional and sagittal (think spokes on a wheel) directions to correlate better with the usual MTF plots you’re familiar with. There’s often a dramatic difference in sharpness between these two directions, and the chart photographs show it clearly. If you spot some small islands of resolution peaks/dips in the following charts, you can safely ignore them. Visually imperceptible variations in the surface of the resolution chart can show up rather dramatically in the plots, because the analysis software is exquisitely sensitive. What the resolution target looks like. Mine is mounted ‘upside down’. Finally, I’m getting around to some actual resolution results. Tests were done with “Live View” manual focus at maximum magnification and IR remote. I use the “best of 10 shots”; not every shot gets the same resolution results. The corners aren’t good until f/5.6, but the center is terrific at all apertures until a little beyond f/16. You don’t want to use f/16 or beyond if resolution is important to you. Diffraction kills sharpness. I didn’t bother to measure, although this lens lets you set the aperture all the way down to f/32. The resolution of this lens is wonderful. It’s easy to see why it was Big Man On Campus during its time. It’s amazing how well this lens measures up today, considering the limited tools and materials available to lens designers in the 60’s and 70’s. Conclusions If you don’t mind slowing down your pace a bit, this lens can produce images second to none. It’s a shame that the lens mount doesn’t permit being mounted on the latest Nikons. Back in the day, Nikon engineers seemed to be more fanatical about close-up photography. I bet most of you have never even seen the PB-4 bellows and its really cool attachments. The next time you watch the first Star Wars movie, think about the lenses that shot it. Sample Pictures Protea flower, high magnification, 55mm reverse-mounted on PB-4 Whole protea flower, f/8 #review

It’s a huge time saver to make edits on a picture and then share those same changes with many other similar photos. There are several ways to automatically add edits from a single photo into one or more other photos in Lightroom. What follows are the main techniques that work best for me. The Adobe programmers didn’t exactly make this stuff intuitive. One-photo-at-a-time Edit Sharing Technique Go to the “Develop” module. Edit your master photo first Pick a representative photo, and make all of your desired edits on it. Copy which edits you want to place into another shot (or shots) Click the “Copy…” button in the lower left of your screen. Set or clear the checkboxes to configure which edits you want to propagate to another image inside the “Copy Settings” dialog. You don't have to include any editing steps that don't make sense to transfer into other shots. Click the “Copy” button at the bottom of the “Copy Settings” dialog after you’ve finished selecting all of the edit steps you want saved. Select an un-edited photo to receive edits Click another un-edited image from the filmstrip at the bottom of the screen that you want to have edited. Click the “Paste” button in the lower left part of the screen. The selected photo will be edited with the features you have chosen. Click on another image from the filmstrip to paste the edits into, if you want to transfer the same edits into yet another picture. Click the “Paste” button again. How to Modify Multiple Images at Once Go to the “Develop” module. Edit your master photo first Pick a representative photo (the “master” photo) and make all of the edits on it. Don’t worry if you made a few edits that you don’t want to transfer to the other shots, such as cropping, because you don’t have to transfer every single edit into other shots. Select the multiple photos to transfer your edits into Select the range of un-edited photos (Shift and Control buttons) that you want to transfer the edits into while your main edited photo is still active. Your active photo will have a white border on it in the filmstrip at the screen bottom. The other selected photos to receive the edits will have a medium-gray border on them in the filmstrip. Apple users will need to click the equivalent buttons that let you multi-select the desired photos. Click the “Sync…” button at the lower-right of the screen. The “Synchronize Settings” dialog Select all of the edits to transfer into the chosen photos via the "Synchronize Settings" dialog. Make sure un-wanted edits get un-checked (such as “Crop”). Click the “Synchronize” button to start the batch processing. Your selected edits will get transferred into all of the selected photos at once. Summary The procedures to perform edit repetition and batch edits aren’t very intuitive in Lightroom. Once you have repeated these steps a few times, it becomes pretty easy to efficiently re-use your editing labor. Learning these techniques will save you many hours of labor and also enable you to reliably repeat edits on multiple photos.

Nikon has had a feature called “Color Sketch” available for many years on several of its amateur/enthusiast camera models. Color Sketch isn’t offered on any of its professional models, of course. I did an article a few years ago on how to use this same Effects feature to perform “focus peaking” here: If you have read about it on the web, then you probably noted that Color Sketch is looked upon with loathing and contempt. Most of these same web site reviewers have the same disdain for HDR photography; anything that isn’t “realistic” should be banned from photography. I was doing some Live View shooting the other day and tried out the Color Sketch/Focus Peaking technique with a manual-focus lens. I happened to notice that my LCD screen was showing me some very striking images, which got me interested in what this feature could do. Some cameras, like my D7000 and D610, don’t offer a live-view Color Sketch effect mode, but the effect can instead be found in the “Retouch” menu. Even shooting Raw format, you can easily make a color sketch version of your shot in-camera. The color sketch version of the photo is only available in jpeg format. Cameras that allow a color sketch retouch conversion but not a Live View imaging mode make using this feature a bit more challenging. You’ll find that some subjects make terrible color sketch images, and you can’t reliably predict this ahead of time. Fortunately, you don’t have to make any decisions while you’re out shooting. You can explore converting shots back in the comfort of your home; if you don’t like the effect, just delete it. It costs you nothing except a few moments of your time. Philodendron Retouch Steps to Make a Color Sketch Select Color sketch in the Retouch menu Select the shot to convert When you select a photo to convert (even raw format) you’ll note that already-retouched shots cannot be re-selected. Use the multi-selector arrows to locate the shot, then press OK to select it. Default: Drab The default color sketch always looks dreadful to me, but maybe that’s just me. Use the multi-selector up/down arrows to select Vivdness and then use the left/right arrows to alter the vividness. Crank up the Outlines I increase the Outlines, which thickens the lines. Press OK to save the shot, or else select cancel if the shot looks hopeless. It will save it as jpeg format, and it won't touch your original shot. The original can be in raw format or jpeg. Proteas Minolta XK with 135mm f/2.8 Humming birds Patio Queen Palm Succulents Backlit leaves Rose Protea detail Summary Think of Color Sketch like candy. A little bit of it can be quite nice, but you’d never make a steady diet of it. Before dismissing it, I really think you should give this feature a chance, if your camera has it. I find it ironic that the “pro” cameras don’t have anything like this feature (they’re above that sort of thing). It can turn a boring subject into something quite dramatic. See if it doesn’t bring out the inner Andy Warhol in you.

Ironically, a major disadvantage of macros is their narrow field of coverage. You get really, really close to see tiny subjects, but you wish you could see a wider field of view. This problem can be solved by panning and taking overlapping shots to create a panorama, but there’s yet another problem. Focus depth is just too shallow on these small subjects. Now you have to turn to focus stacking. It’s actually possible to combine all of these techniques together to create a macro panorama with deep focus. I’m going to show you how you can use a few different programs to make this all possible. A Macro Panorama from 3 overlapping stacked shots I’ll mention that you can make theoretically superior macro panoramas by translating the camera/lens instead of simply panning on a tripod, but the results are basically no different. For landscapes, especially with a wide-angle lens, you can notice significant perspective distortion in panoramas. In macro panoramas, it’s difficult, if not impossible to see perspective distortion unless you overlap a very large number of stacked shots. Panorama via translating the camera/lens on a rack Panorama via panning the camera/lens As you see, the pair of shots above look fundamentally the same. You wouldn't be able to tell which shot was done via panning or translating the camera. Macro Panorama Recipe The following discussion spells out how I make focus-stacked macro panoramas. I’m using a Nikon D850, that supports focus-shift shooting. I am using the 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor at f/8. I typically shoot 25 shots with a step width setting of 6, and I mostly use ‘DX’ crop mode. The CombineZP program I use that combines the photo stacks can have trouble with the huge FX-format shots from the D850, but DX-format shots are no problem. Please shoot in Raw format. Shoot a whole stack of shots (using a tripod) at the left-most panorama framing, starting with the lens focused on the nearest detail. Autofocus must be active for the focus-shift shooting feature to work correctly. If the last shot didn’t focus far enough for the desired detail, then simply do another stack of shots without touching focus (it will pick up where if left off). Next, pan over to the next panorama position with about a 30% overlap from the previous stack of shots. Focus on the nearest detail. Take the next stack of shots. Repeat the panning/refocus/stack-shooting until the right-most shots are complete. Open up the raw-format shots in a program such as CaptureNX-D that can batch-process the shots and convert them all into 16-bit TIF format. Run the (Windows-only) CombineZP program or an equivalent (such as Helicon Focus) on each stack of shots. Save the stacked photo in 16-bit TIF format for best quality. The CombineZP program leaves each stacked photo with unwanted artifacts around the edges; don’t worry about this for now. If you're interested in more details on using the CombineZP program, use this link to another article I wrote on the topic. Stacked photo with edge artifacts that need removal You can see in the stacked shot above that the edges have mirror-image artifacts. These artifacts will need to be removed before you can combine the shots into a panorama. . The CombineZP program gives you the ability to crop off these artifacts, but it doesn’t let you specify the exact pixel dimensions of the cropped file. Import the stacked TIF photos into Lightroom. In the Develop module, crop the shots to remove the unwanted edge artifacts. All of the cropped shots will need to be the exact same dimensions before they can be merged into a panorama, so use the File|Export|Image Sizing|Resize to Fit to save each cropped file with the same pixel dimensions in both width and height. You have a variety of image formats to select from here, but I’d still suggest you use something other than jpeg for best quality. Select the stacked/cropped/sized/exported photos and use the Photo | Photo Merge | Panorama… Lightroom feature to combine the stacked shots into a panorama. You can select from the projection options of Spherical/Cylindrical/Perspective to combine the shots. I usually select Cylindrical. Left stacked shot with un-cropped mirror artifacts Middle stacked shot with un-cropped mirror artifacts Right stacked shot with un-cropped mirror artifacts The three stacked shots above (from the CombineZP program) had to be cropped and then resized before Lightroom could successfully combine them into a panorama. The finished result is shown at the top of this article. Conclusion There are probably many ways to get a panorama from stacked macro photos, and this is just one of them. There’s no question that it’s a bit tedious to make macro panoramas this way, but the quality is simply superb.

Nikon provides an automatic focus-calibrating feature on some of its newer cameras, which uses Live-View autofocus feedback to perform the calibration. Live-View focus uses the more accurate (and very slow) "contrast detect" focus. This article analyzes just how good (or how bad) this feature is. The camera expects an ‘easy’ target in good light to get a reliable focus result. The tests in this article were shot at EV 7.6, which should be well inside the realm of “easy” focusing for this camera. I am using the D850 for all of these tests, along with my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 AF-S lens shot with a wide-open aperture. This fast lens exhibits spherical aberration, so the optimum focus fine-tune calibration value is different for other lens apertures, but that’s a whole other story. You’ll typically want to calibrate with your lens aperture wide-open, since stopping down will just hide small focus calibration errors. I’m using my 85mm f/1.4 for this evaluation, because it has an exceptionally narrow focus depth when shot wide open at short distances. It desperately needs accurate focus calibration. Automatic Focus Fine-Tune feature To perform the automatic focus calibration, you begin by focusing your lens on the target in Live View mode (with AF-S), and then press the “AF mode” and the “Movie Record” buttons simultaneously for about 2 seconds. After you give the camera permission to continue (as shown above), it then assigns the focus fine-tune value to your lens. The “AF mode” button is on the front of the camera near its base. Plot of a perfectly focus-calibrated lens The holy grail of focus calibration is shown in the ‘profile’ plot above, generated by the MTFMapper program. The blue line shows where the expected focus should be, and the green plot shows where sharp focus actually occurred. Truth be told, taking multiple photos with the same focus calibration multiple times results in perfect focus only approximately 70% of the time with this lens. The other shots would exhibit small shifts both in front of and behind the desired focus plane. The “correct answer” starts to involve statistics, due to the inevitable small amount of slop in the imperfect camera/lens focusing system. I got the results shown above my manually performing focus fine-tune calibration. Next, I used AF-C continuous phase-detect autofocus while taking the shot. The focus target I used the target shown above to perform the automatic calibration. This shot actually shows what the MTFMapper program calls an “annotated plot”, which includes little resolution measurements added to each edge that it can measure. This target makes it really easy for a camera to focus; the camera focus point is aimed at the right-hand edge of the large black central rectangle. The target itself is rotated 45 degrees relative to the camera image sensor, so that the right-hand side is closer to the camera. The MTFMapper web site offers free files of focus targets and resolution targets that you can then print and mount.. It's of course not mandatory to use a target like this for automatic focus fine-tune calibration, but you'll find that it's superior to almost anything else you could use. Target measurements detail, fine-tune +2 The close-up above shows my manually-calibrated lens (85mm f/1.4) using the focus fine-tune value of +2. The plot shown earlier in this article was generated using all of the measurements it makes using this chart. This photograph of the focus target used phase-detect focus, with AF-C continuous focus. The highest MTF50 edge measurements pretty much align with the vertical right-hand edge of the large rectangle, just as they should. I made a series of attempts to have the camera focus-calibrate itself, just to see how these measurements compared to my manually-determined focus fine-tune value of +2. All of my attempts were done at f/1.4, and the camera was on a tripod. My first automatic focus calibration attempt got an answer of -8. I then took a shot of the target using this new focus fine-tune value using AF-C and phase-detect. Focus results calibrated with fine-tune -8 The results, just as I had assumed, showed the lens focus was now much too near to the camera. The automatic calibration feature got it very,very wrong. Maybe that was just a fluke. This focus miss would result in a resolution loss of about 18% at the desired focus plane. Target measurements detail, fine-tune -8 The measurement details shown above indicate that focus got shifted to the right, nearer to the camera and away from the large vertical edge of the target where I had aimed the focus sensor. Not wanting to give up just yet, I tried the whole automatic focus-fine tune calibration procedure again. This time, the calibration fine-tune value result was -5. Slightly closer to the correct answer, but still really poor. Focus results calibrated with fine-tune -5 The plot shows that the camera is still near-focusing and not very close to the target edge that I had aimed at. Time to try calibration again. The next fine-tune answer was -3. Close, but no cigar as they say. Focus results calibrated with fine-tune -3 Focus fine-tune of -3 shown above is fairly close to the desired edge, but not as good as what it should be. I tried auto-calibration yet again, and the next answer was -5. The plot expectedly looks almost exactly like the “-5” plot I showed earlier. At this point, I’d seen enough. The results would have been closer to what was really needed for correct focus if I had instead never even bothered to calibrate the lens at all. I tried the same auto-calibration experiments on my D500 quite a while ago, and I got similarly disappointing results with that camera. At the time, I thought that maybe my camera was an exception and other cameras would do a better job than mine. I had tried a few different lenses, but none were properly auto-calibrated. Conclusion Sadly, you will probably get much better results by manually calibrating lens focus yourself. I’ll bet everyone thought that Nikon had finally solved the focus calibration issue. The MTFMapper program feedback (with the focus target files at the same web site) makes manual focus calibration fairly simple, and the results are very accurate. Nikon’s engineers need to take their auto-calibrate idea back to the drawing board. By the way, Nikon’s mirrorless cameras also provide a focus fine-tune calibration feature. Even those cameras can use a little help getting focus just right, because lenses don’t always do exactly what they’re told to do. They’re still better than DSLRs for focus in most situations, but even mirrorless cameras aren’t flawless focusers. You can get the free MTFMapper program here.

I used to handle most of my photo noise reduction and un-sharp masking in my Lightroom program. Sometimes I use Photoshop, Capture NX-D, Sharpener Pro 3, Zoner Pro, and a few other conventional editors for these tasks (with similar results from all of them). I got curious about what recent developments in artificial intelligence technology might be able to do in handling these same tasks. My curiosity got the better of me, and I bought Topaz DeNoise AI. You might think from the program’s name that DeNoise AI is only used to rid noise from your photos, but it’s just as useful for sharpening them, too. The main reason I like DeNoise AI is its ability to simply make your lens seem better than it is. Details are enhanced without any “haloes” on the edges. Completely noise-free photos can still benefit from this program. ISO 3200 using Topaz DeNoise AI “AI Clear”, no luminance fix The ISO 3200 shot above didn’t have very much color noise, but DeNoise got rid of what was there. The luminance noise seems nearly untouched, but the sharpness is worlds better. There’s not a hint of haloes to be found. You can see the DeNolise AI settings used in the right-hand side of the picture. I really zoomed into the shot to be able to show the individual hare hairs at high magnification. Sorry; I couldn’t resist. ISO 3200 enhanced with Topaz DeNoise AI “AI Clear”, separate luminance fix The shot above had luminance noise removed in Lightroom before calling the DeNoise plug-in. The Lightroom luminanace setting was 54, with a Detail value of 50. Fine details are now mostly lost; look under the bunny’s chin to see how the details have turned into mush. I’d much rather have a slightly ‘sandy’ background and retain the fine details. Luminance noise removal works best if you use masking and only apply it to those open, featureless areas of the shot prior to calling up the DeNoise AI plug-in. I’ll discuss in the article below how DeNoise is a bit finicky about the settings range that more effectively works on luminance noise. ISO 3200 “DeNoise AI” effect on luminance noise Without changing any DeNoise AI algorithm settings, here’s an ISO 3200 shot that the same algorithm decided to have a larger impact on luminance noise. It did so in an intelligent way, enhancing details while still decreasing luminance noise. I’d swear that the artificial intelligence knows when luminance noise is more distracting and gets more aggressive with it. AI algorithms always have an air of mystery about them; nobody knows exactly how they make their decisions. What does Artifical Intelligence here even mean? This program “knows” what to do by being shown many, many samples of noisy and fuzzy input shots and then sharp, clean output shots. The AI algorithm figures out what needs to be done to the pixels to produce a clean output, thus relieving the photographer from having to spend a bunch of time and effort to try to achieve the same level of quality. The first thing I found using this program was that you better have a really high-performance computer and GPU. I tried out DeNoise AI on what I considered to be a decent-performing laptop (Windows 10) that had an Intel Core-I7 CPU and an Nvidia Quadro FX 880M GPU (48 cores). It basically brought my laptop to its knees when I tried to process my first photograph with the default setting of “auto update”. By the way, do not buy this program if your computer doesn’t have a GPU. You have been warned. Next, I installed DeNoise AI onto an HP Omen desktop gaming computer with an AMD 3.09 GHz Ryzen 9 3900, 12-Core Processor with 32 GB of RAM. This computer sports an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU (5888 cores), and uses an M.2 drive for storage. Now we’re talkin. This computer coasts though the most intense tasks you can throw at it, including DeNoise AI. I only mention computer hardware here because AI technology needs vastly more computing resources than conventional programs. So, is it worth it? For me, the answer is yes. I’ll let you decide if it’s right for you. Not wanting to abandon using my laptop, I found a way to be able to use DeNoise AI that makes it workable, if not entirely pleasant. I’ll share those procedures in what follows. So, what’s so important about noise reduction and sharpening, anyway? For me, it’s about being able to use high ISO. A large proportion of my shooting is done using long focal lengths (600mm) in lighting conditions that are not ideal. I have never been thrilled at the “smeary” results when using ISO 3200, even with my Nikon D850. I shoot only 14-bit raw format, but nevertheless the high-ISO shots always leave something to be desired. And if you’ve tried shooting wide-angle star-scapes, you know what a challenge color noise removal can be. For low-ISO images, this program still earns its keep by doing such an excellent job with sharpening. Using manual techniques in various editors, I haven’t been able to outdo what the “AI Clear” algorithm achieves. Running Topaz DeNoise AI After you install the program, there are a couple of ways that you can use it. If you want to, it can be executed as a stand-alone application (just double-click its desktop icon). Using Lightroom, it can be executed from either the Library or Develop tabs via the menu Photo | Edit In | Topaz DeNoise AI. You can also right-click the “film strip” photo or edited photo and select “Edit In | Topaz DeNoise AI” to get there. For some editors, you can tell them to install a plug-in like other Photoshop plug-ins that expect the folder that will have the “tltopazdenoiseaips.8bf” in it. Did you know the “8bf” suffix stands for “eight-bit filter”? An example Zoner editor plug-in installation procedure would look like: Settings | Preferences | Plug-ins | Add…| (browse to tltopazdenoiseaips.8bf folder) Apply You can use raw-format input files, but Topaz will save the finished results only in neutral image formats, such as 16-bit LZW Tiff, png, DNG, or jpeg. My setup, when executed from Lightroom, saves the DeNoise results in a file that adds “-Edit” to the file name, and saves it in 16-bit LZW tiff format. In the Zoner Editor, it returns the plug-in changes into your un-saved raw file to save as Tif or jpeg. In the Capture NX-D editor, you use “File |Open With| Topaz DeNoise AI…” and Topaz will save the results into the folder configured in Capture NX-D via the “File|Open With|Register” dialog. Every program seems to be a little different in how it captures the DeNoise results. It’s generally recommended to process your photos in DeNoise AI after your other editing is done, but you can compare your own results to see if processing order is important to you. Also, you probably want to avoid any cropping until DeNoise has processed your photo; it seems to do a better job with the larger set of information in the un-cropped shot. Topaz DeNoise AI Configuration Suggested Preferences The default settings of DeNoise AI are not what the vast majority of its audience will want. The first thing that should be done after starting the program is to change the default settings via the File | Preferences menu. Most people will want to turn OFF the “Auto-Update Preview” option. If you don’t do this, then it will attempt to re-calculate and re-draw the display every time you scroll or zoom. Next, you will want to set the Performance | Ai Processor | Default GPU. You don’t want the processing burden to fall on your computer CPU; that’s what GPU’s live for. Three Different Ways to Use Topaz DeNoise AI There are three fundamentally different kinds of algorithms for removing noise and sharpening in Denoise AI. They are called DeNoise AI, AI Clear, and Low Light. As noted below, Topaz just released a newer version 3.1.1 that expands your options to 4 algorithms. Compare all algorithms together For different conditions, different algorithms might be superior. Topaz will let you easily compare them to see which you like best. You usually have to look up really close to see differences, so there’s a little viewing rectangle that you can size and move to scrutinize small sections of the picture. The settings are all maintained separately for each algorithm, even after you close and re-open the program. “DeNoise AI” (or "Standard") is intended to enhance details in low-noise images. “AI Clear” (or "Clear") is targeted at high-noise, high ISO images. “Low Light” is designed for high-noise images with low detail retention. The new "Severe Low Light" is for super-high ISO's. I nearly always choose “AI Clear” (or just "Clear" now). 5-19-2021 Update: Version 3.1.1 just arrived Topaz just came out with a new version as I’m writing this article called 3.1.1. The number of algorithms has expanded to 4. The “ Comparison view” window now needs you to select which 3 algorithms to compare against the “original” view. The 4 algorithms are called “Standard”, which corresponds to “DeNoise AI”, “Clear” corresponds to “AI Clear”, “Low Light” for difficult low-light conditions, and “Severe Noise” for extreme ISO shots. You can zoom your view using the mouse wheel, which will make the white viewing rectangle change size automatically. You can left-mouse- button-drag the image to move to see the area of interest. If you have a high-performance computer, you’ll probably want to select the “Comparison View”, which splits a view of the photo into 4 separate images. When the view gets updated (click on the “Update Preview” button), all of the algorithms will get executed with their individual settings. Remember to select the desired final algorithm before clicking the “Save Image” at the bottom of the screen to finish. If you have a ‘regular’ computer, you’ll probably want to select the “Side-by-side View”, which compares the original with your selected algorithm results, such as “AI Clear” in a split screen. Let Topaz figure out what to do You decide what to do For all of the algorithms, you have the choice of running in “Auto” mode or not. The program can decide what it should do to optimize the image in Auto, or it will let you make the decisions if this is turned off. In either case, you still get to decide what the “Post-Processing” values should be. I usually disagree with the sharpening values that the “Auto” mode decides to use, so I keep this option turned off. Stars: it seems to know color noise versus stars In really, really dark shots, color noise can be awful. DeNoise really shines for ridding this. For star shots, it can be a bit difficult to tell since the sky is so dark. DeNoise has a tool to help this, so read on. The “Brighten” option The “Brighten” option can lighten dark backgrounds without adding color noise in doing so. It seems far superior at picking out details and colors than your own eyes can in nighttime scenes. I could barely make out the pine tree when I took the shot; the “Brighten” feature can even discern the green pine needles from the dark branches. You may or may not like this effect, but having choices are always better than having none. Algorithm Settings When I first started using DeNoiseAI, it seemed as if luminance noise wasn’t even touched. It took quite a while to dial in settings that handle this noise to my satisfaction, especially with the “AI Clear” algorithm. ISO 2500 using ‘AI Clear’ You’d think the shot on the right-hand side above was nearly filling the frame, but it’s just a tiny part of the photo. The AI Clear algorithm (now called just "Clear") just did a spectacular job in cleaning up details and noise. This software found details that I didn’t know were there. ISO 2500 algorithm comparison In the shot above, the “Denoise AI” did the best job in my opinion. It eliminated luminance noise, while the “AI Clear” didn’t touch luminance noise. In another test with different settings, I gave the edge to “AI Clear” instead for the sharpest rendering with good luminance noise suppression. You can almost drive yourself crazy with the number of knobs and algorithms to select from. My favorite recipe for this shot ended up being “AI Clear”, “Remove Noise”=high, “Enhance Sharpness”=low, “Recover Original Detail”=23, “Color Noise Reduction”=6. Until the right algorithm settings are found, you might be fooled into thinking that a particular algorithm is just not suited to your image. I encourage you to take the time to fully explore what effects the various settings have on your images with each algorithm. Once you find a good recipe, I’d suggest you record it. Nothing can help ISO 12800 In case you were wondering, extreme ISO’s are still hopeless. You can rid noise, but there’s no detail or dynamic range to work with. You might want this for surveillance work, but not much else. Masking But wait, there’s more. Use DeNoise on parts of the photo You can also apply sharpening/noise adjustments to pieces of your photo. You start by clicking the “Mask” button at the bottom of the program. To apply that particular mask, click the “Apply Mask” button. When all effects are done, you still click the “Apply” button at the bottom-right to save the file (and return to the calling application). A realistic example of this using this feature would be to selectively sharpen only the eyes and lashes of a model. This is very common among portrait photographers who never want to apply sharpening to the skin of the model (they usually apply gaussian blur instead). Batch Mode DeNoise AI can work on many images in one sitting, if you wish. Each image can have a different algorithm applied to it. The bottom of the screen lets you make image selections and lets you know which algorithm it will use. When done making algorithm selections on each image, the button at the bottom-right will display “Save * Images”, where the * indicates how many images to be processed and saved. What DeNoise AI Won’t Do A totally un-handled image defect is motion blur. This program doesn’t do anything about motion. Topaz sells another product called Sharpen AI, which adds a “Stabilize” feature to rid image motion blur. I try to always use a high-enough shutter speed (or vibration reduction) to avoid this problem. Sharpen AI does some noise reduction as well, but I think DeNoise AI does a bit better job in this regard. I just want you to be aware that this feature exists. Conclusion I couldn’t be more pleased at the sophistication of Topaz DeNoise AI for sharpening fine details without adding edge haloes. If you have color noise, this program completely eliminates it. Luminance noise is handled at least as well as a professional editor would do, but only if you find the ‘sweet spot’ in the algorithm settings. The latest DeNoise AI version that actually came out the day of this article writing is 3.1.1. I’ll update this article if I notice any significant changes. It appears the main change is an addition of an algorithm to handle extreme ISO called “Severe Noise”. Those programmers at Topaz are obviously kept pretty busy. Even this program can’t perform magic. Personally, I’m still not willing to sacrifice the loss of details and dynamic range beyond ISO 3200. But this program makes ISO 3200 look pretty good. Although it adds an extra process step to editing, I am more than willing to tolerate the extra complication to get these premium results on my “keeper” shots.

What happens when you slightly miss focus? Most web sites who quote lens resolutions avoid using autofocus to take their measurements. Instead, they take a series of resolution test chart shots at slightly different distances and report the best result. How far off can a lens be from optimal focus distance and still achieve the peak resolution? Not very far, it seems. The following discussion explores how lens resolution changes as you approach, enter, and then leave the zone of optimal focus. I have chosen my Nikon D850 and Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens for this testing. I’m not using vibration reduction, and the camera is mounted on a sturdy tripod. I have the camera set to use electronic front-curtain shutter and it’s in “mirror up” mode to totally eliminate any vibrations. I trip the shutter using a wired remote release. I left the aperture wide open for all testing, since this test is all about managing shallow focus depth. Any vibrations would look to the measurement software like an unsharp or defocused lens. Test setup: camera mounted on a sliding stage I mounted the camera onto a precision linear translation stage (made by Melles Griot) typically used for microscope work. The stage has an attached micrometer head (made by Mitutoyo) that lets me shift the stage (and the camera) to within an accuracy of 0.01mm. I took a series of photos of a resolution target while shifting the camera by 1.00 mm between shots. The camera is mounted such that its balance point is nearer the center column of the tripod. This arrangement is more stable, and helps minimize vibrations. The camera was placed 1.26 meters (1260 mm) from the resolution target, and I used phase-detect autofocus for the initial focus setting while the camera was near the middle stage position (at the 12.0 mm micrometer setting). This distance exactly fills the frame with the resolution target. Next, I moved the camera on the stage back by 5mm farther away from the target. For each photo of the chart, I shifted the camera exactly 1 millimeter closer without touching the lens focus. The whole point here is to adjust focus purely by shifting the camera and not by re-focusing the lens. The theme of this exercise is to start beyond the correct focus position and then progressively move closer to the target in each test shot. At some point, optimal focus should be achieved, and then the target will gradually go out of focus again as I go past the point of best focus. I processed each raw-format shot using the MTFMapper program to get the MTF50 resolution measurements. I'm using the peak resolution value, rounded to the nearest MTF50 lp/mm value. As the typical resolution chart displayed below shows, "resolution" of a lens is actually a vague value spread out over the whole sensor, and it's different in the saggital (wheel spoke) and meridional (tangent) directions. A typical MTF50 resolution test chart result Resolution versus distance change results The plot of the resolution measurement results above show how rapidly the resolution changes with distance. Optimal focus only extends over a bit more than 1 millimeter! Given the chart distance, it means that for this lens and aperture, a focus precision within 1/1260 or .08 percent is required for the best resolution. Most people wouldn’t think that optimal focus could possibly be this demanding. The initial focus, obtained via autofocus while the stage was at 12mm, turned out to be incorrect (the MTF50 was 41 lp/mm). Best focus was 2 or 3 millimeters closer to the target (at 9 or 10mm on the stage, with the MTF50 of about 43). The autofocus error was small, but it had a fairly significant impact on the resolution. For this lens, a focus fine-tune change from -4 to -1 fixed the focus error. When I say “fixed”, I mean that the typical autofocus position was shifted forward to where it should be. Some shots focus too far and some shots focus too near the target. Autofocus isn’t perfect, but it can get pretty close. It’s easy to see why web sites that report lens resolution generally have to abandon using autofocus to perform their testing. Even well-calibrated cameras aren’t really capable of this level of repeatable autofocus performance. The results also show how important focus calibration is; even slight adjustment errors can make a lens look bad.

I have read that manual focus using magnified Live View mode, with “focus peaking”, is the most accurate way to focus. I intend to either verify or debunk this claim. My software of choice for analyzing image sharpness is MTFMapper. Did you know that the mars rover Perseverance main lenses (on the stereo-panorama Mastcam-Z) were measured and qualified using Frans van den Bergh’s MTFMapper? This software is more than capable of determining just how good focus peaking really is. The lower the focus peaking level value, the narrower the depth of focus that shows peaking information. For the tests that follow, I tried setting the peaking level to 1, but it generally provided no useful feedback for many subjects. The peaking level 2 gave the best combination of useful feedback and focus discrimination. Peaking level 3 wasn’t nearly picky enough, and so wasn’t a useful test. At high LCD screen magnifications, peaking doesn’t provide any feedback at all, so I used the highest magnification that still provided peaking feedback. As you’ll see, it turns out that focus peaking feedback really depends on the level of subject detail and which focus peaking level you select. If the subject detail is either too fine or too coarse, then there’s often no peaking feedback at all at peaking level 1! To be able to physically measure the quality of the peaking information, I used one of the focus target designs that are available at the MTFMapper website. I would manually focus on this target using focus peaking, and then evaluate the resulting (raw-format) photograph. I chose this particular target, because it has details at 3 different levels to evaluate small, medium, and large details. Since I use the MTFMapper program to help me calibrate my phase-detect focus, I will also compare the accuracy of my phase-detect autofocus against the manual focus-peaking results. Focus Peaking Level Selection from “i” button To invoke focus peaking, the D850 focus mode selector switch has to be set to “M” and then click the “i” button while in Live View to set some peaking level other than “off”. Thereafter, anytime you’re in Live View in manual-focus mode, focus peaking will be active with the level you last used. The shooting/display option d8 from the ‘pencil' menu will let you select a peaking color other than the default red. Peaking highlight color selection d8 Peaking hightlight colors Depending upon your subject, you can choose between red, yellow, blue, or white peaking highlight colors. Focus Peak level #1 LCD screen If you don’t look carefully, you won’t even see any of the red “peaking” highlights at peaking level #1 in the shot above. I am using a chart that is slanted at 45 degrees, and then used manual focus to get the little black dot inside the red square into focus. Without using my LCD viewfinder magnifying loupe, it was very, very difficult to see the red level #1 peaking highlights. Detail of LCD screen showing peaking level 1 highlights For this and the other test shots, I used an 85mm lens at f/1.4 and I set my D850 to “DX” mode. The focus distance was 1.5 meters. This combination of hardware yields an extremely narrow depth of focus, to make it easier to evaluate focus peaking accuracy. The black target dot being focused is 10mm in diameter. The horizontal band of little rectangles just above the black dot are at a spacing of 2mm. The other focus target markings, either coarser or finer, generally don’t get registered by the focus peaking at all. Since the black target dot itself didn’t get any red focus peaking highlights, I had to use the scale above the dot to manually focus. LCD screen magnified view I used the “+” magnifying glass button to zoom in on the LCD screen. If I magnified the view any more than what’s shown above, then there was no displayed focus peaking marker to be found. I could see the “peaking level 1” highlights only slightly better at this level of screen magnification. Even at the maximum accuracy level of the focus peaking, the little highlights already extend to about 3 subject dot diameters, or about 21mm of actual focus depth. I used the middle of the focus-peaking red band to determine the best manual focus. If I didn’t have the continuous band of little rectangles at just the right frequency to help me focus, then the focus peaking level #1 would have been useless for this particular subject. I don’t think the feedback provided by focus peaking level #1 is generally useful enough to select this setting for general photography. You’ll end up questioning if focus peaking is active or not in many shooting situations. Focus peaking level #2 with un-magnified view Next, I switched to focus peaking level #2. Now, I’m getting better feedback to determine focus. The little 2mm-spaced rectangles above the target dot indicate that roughly 4 dot-diameters (around 25mm of focus depth) is now “in focus”. LCD screen detail, peaking level 2 All of the target markers in the band of sharp focus now have some focus-peaking highlights on them. I’d consider this peaking level to be generally useful for most subjects. The question is, however, if all of those red focus-peaking pixels are really indicating sharp focus. Focus peak level #3 The focus-peaking highlights at level #3 are indicating that a 55mm-wide band is in focus (a depth of 39mm). This is really getting sloppy for focus. Just imagine if the target was a single vertical structure; the “in focus” feedback is just too inaccurate. If I were to photograph a flat subject parallel to the camera sensor, then my focus would probably be really bad. Actual resolution measurements using focus-peaking Shown above is an extreme close-up of the target with MTF50-lp/mm resolution measurements included. I used focus peaking level #1 feedback to determine how to manually focus on the black dot. The feedback used to focus was the horizontal band of little rectangles just above the dot, since the target dot didn’t get any peaking feedback itself. I chose the middle of the area that had the red focus-peaking highlights to estimate where to place focus. The final focus was excellent, and about as good as you could ever hope to get. This shows that focus-peaking can achieve excellent focus accuracy, but only when your subject happens to give sufficient peaking feedback. You need to be able to estimate the “middle zone” of focus, which for some subjects won’t exist. The “acceptable” focus depth in these tests for me is actually about 15mm, while the focus-peaking feedback indicated the depth was about 21mm in the best case (peaking level #1). Again, this was using an 85mm lens at f/1.4 from 1.5 meters away. My own level of acceptable focus is based upon resolution loss, and it’s probably a little more picky than most people’s idea of what’s acceptable. Calibrated phase-detect autofocus So, how’s all of this manual focusing compare to simple (calibrated) phase-detect auto-focus? Not much difference, actually. The shot above was made using AF-C focus after fine-tune calibration, which for this lens and camera combination is +2 at f/1.4. It’s just about as accurate as focus peaking, and a whole lot faster and easier to use. For people that don’t carefully calibrate focus, then using focus-peaking will almost certainly achieve better focus than using phase-detect focus. Personally, using Live View and focus peaking is a bit too painful for me, and almost impossible outdoors unless I bring along my LCD viewfinder loupe that shades the screen from sunlight. Mirrorless cameras with in-viewfinder focus peaking are the way to go, at least for manual-focus lenses. The only time I use focus peaking is when I use my manual-focus lenses and I have a static subject (and my screen loupe to block the sunlight). At least I can be pretty confident that this method does in fact help me set optimal focus for most subjects. If I had to choose a single focus peaking level, then I’d say that level #2 is the Goldilocks setting.

After fussing with tripods and unsuccessfully getting near to low-level macro subjects, I figured there must be better way. I finally found it: how to hand-hold my D850 to get good stacked macro photos. If you have tried to get near to small subjects that are close to ground level using a tripod, you know the pain. Tripods are too unwieldy for most macro shooting outside of the studio. Focus stacking just magnifies the problem. Sorry for the weak pun. For the article that follows, I used the Nikon D850 focus-shift shooting feature. Not many cameras offer this functionality, but if you like to do focus stacking then you might want to consider this feature in your next camera purchase. Even if you only do single-shot macro photography, the gear idea shown may still prove useful to you. Hand-made rifle stock This isn’t a brand-new idea, but I decided to see if I could make a rifle stock that could hold my D850 with the Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens. It’s just too hard to hold the camera/lens combination steady enough for macro photography without some help. I found that I could hold the camera “reasonably” steady using a custom rifle stock, but by no means rock solid. There are a few variations on this rifle stock idea out there on the internet you might be able to purchase if you don’t want to try to make one yourself. My design allows enough clearance to attach my LED ring light onto the front of the lens. I got hardware that acts like a tripod screw (1/4-20 thread) to attach the camera to the rifle stock. I attached a littled wheel to the screw to use as a tightening knob. You can take a look at regular tripod screws to see how the hardware works. Again, you can do web searches for ready-made parts if you don't want to make anything yourself. The camera grip base sits in a shallow depression that prevents any camera rotation on the stock. I use the free Windows-based CombineZP program to perform focus-stacking, and I have learned through experience that it’s remarkably good at aligning a stack of photos that have significant side-to-side misalignment. What it can’t do well (and no software can) is fix uneven front-to-back focus shifting. There’s no correction for gaps in a stack of photos where nothing is in focus. It’s crucial that you have overlapping sharp-focus slices in your photos, or else the stack will be ruined. Your main enemy outside is invariably the wind buffeting your subject. I found that my 105mm at f/8 (infinity focus) needs a focus shift size of ‘6’ to always get proper shot overlaps with the D850 using focus-shift shooting. The rifle stock with a little monopod-style front attachment lets me easily control and nearly eliminate the front-to-back wobble problem. I still get a fair amount of side-to-side wobble, but that’s almost no problem at all for CombineZP using its “Align and Balance Used Frames (Quick)” macro. If the subject is a little higher off of the ground, then I sit on the ground and rest the little monopod piece on my leg. With the monopod piece resting on something and the back end of the stock resting against my shoulder, it’s enough to mostly eliminate front-to-back motion. And using the rifle stock, I can get as close to my subject as I need. This scheme depends upon the D850 focus-shift shooting feature, however. I give the camera the go-ahead, and it takes all of the shots automatically while I just hang on for the few seconds it takes to take the stack of photos. If I had to manually either shift focus or move the camera forward shot-to-shot, I don’t think I would ever get a suitable focus stack. I used to get focus stacks using my Nikon PB-4 bellows that has a focus rack. This setup demanded a steady tripod and careful, even turns of the focus rack adjustment knob to get an acceptable focus stack. It was slow and tedious, but it worked. The D850 makes this task trivial in comparison. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The following example is using a stack of 20 photos, shot using the rifle stock. The CombineZP program can’t use RAW photos, so I first convert them into TIF format (I used CaptureNX-D to batch-convert them). CombineZP sometimes has problems with full-size FX images in the TIF format (around 350MB each!), which changing to DX mode solves. Set up CombineZP program to show its menus Click on File | *New to select the TIF file stack folder Pick the photos to stack CombineZP dialog after photos are loaded Select the “macro” that aligns your shots Select the macro to stack the aligned shots Draw a rectangle to select the stacked result portion to keep Use the mouse to select a rectangle around the final stacked image that avoids the portion that looks like a reflection. Select File | Save Rectangle As and save the result as TIF format for the best quality. There are other file formats, such as jpeg, that can be used, too. The finished stack of 20 shots The methods I have outlined make it easy and flexible to get your stacked photos. Let’s face it: unless it’s reasonably convenient to do, you’re going to avoid making stacked shots. My D850 on a rifle stock has made shooting these shots really easy.

The Nikon D850 has a focus-shift shooting feature, but they provide no concrete information about how much of a “Focus step width” to use. Instead, they only give you a step-size to select, ranging from 1 (small steps) to 10 (big steps). 105mm Micro Nikkor at f/8.0 15 stacked shots, shift 6, 0.4X For a shot like the kangaroo paw above, how do you determine what focus-shift step size to use? How do you determine how many shots to stack? What aperture should you use? If you have ever tried a macro shot with the level of magnification like this photo, you know that you can’t get this much depth of focus with a single shot. Before you go out into the field to shoot macro subjects, it would be worth your time to know to configure your camera and lens. The following article shows you how to calibrate your focus-shift shooting for an optimum shift step-size. The Focus shift shooting menu D850, 105mm Micro Nikkor, and LED ring light I used the gear shown above to take the close-up shots for the photos that follow. The battery-powered LED ring light provides really excellent shadow-less illumination. This setup works well even at 1.0X magnification. A tripod isn’t strictly necessary at long focus distances to do focus-stacking, but it (or some other camera support) certainly is required at high magnifications. You should use the “Silent photography” setting whenever possible, to minimize vibrations. I did some testing with my Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 lens on the D850 to dig a little deeper into these “Focus step widths”. It turns out that those Nikon engineers did some pretty smart engineering. Although focus-shift shooting can be done with any autofocus Nikon lens at any distance, the main reason for this camera feature is for macro photography. Focus depth is incredibly small at high image magnifications, and most subjects turn out to be very disappointing with only a miniscule region in sharp focus. Nikon partially fixed this narrow-focus-depth problem with the ability to take a requested number of shots while automatically changing the focus slightly between shots. A problem arises with the “slight” focus change you want to specify to the camera. When you change lenses and/or apertures, the amount of focus change is different with every combination. To some degree, Nikon simply punted and came up with a dimensionless step value that you can request. Nikon only partially fixed the shallow-focus problem, because they don’t actually stack the photos. I’ll discuss later in the article how that problem can be rectified. 10 Stacked photos, Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 1X It’s hard to believe, but the shot above is actually a stack of 10 photos. The smallest divisions on the ruler are actually 1/100”. This means that the region in focus is about 0.15 inches (3.8 mm) along the ruler. Since this is a stack of 10 shots, a single shot has only about 0.015 inches in focus! The ruler was rotated to 70 degrees, so the actual focus depth is even a little less. The combined stacked shots above, shot at f/8 with the Micro Nikkor 105mm, are at life-size magnification. Now, try to imagine if the lens focused down to maybe 2X magnification; almost nothing would be in focus. I chose f/8, since it’s the best combination of focus depth and resolution. The f/8 I mention throughout this article is the infinity-setting f/8, and it doesn’t take into account the increasing f-number as magnification increases. Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 1X single frame The shot above is a single frame taken with the Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8 and 1X magnification. There’s almost no depth of focus at all! Now you see why focus stacking is gaining in popularity. I did a number of tests to find out how much the focus-shift “step size” should be to guarantee focus overlap, but not to overlap focus any more than necessary. With the 105mm at f/8 at this focus distance, the largest focus step width size that would still have a frame-to-frame focus overlap was 7. If I stepped larger than that value, then I was left with unacceptable bands of out-of-focus in the stacked photo. If there was any wiggle in the camera or subject, I once again had a ruined shot stack. I determined that the optimal step size for life-size magnification with the 105mm at f/8 is 6. This gives a very slight safety margin for vibrations or image movement. I used a tripod for all of my testing, so the Silent photography is a great option to minimize vibrations. If you try hand-holding shots instead, turn the Silent photography option off (always use a tripod or some other device to help steady your camera for really close shots). After I had my desired test settings, I just pressed the “Start” option to begin automatically shooting the series of shots. After a brief “Processing” message, the D850 would then take the series of shots.You can also press the center button on the multi-selector to start shooting, once "Start" is highlighted. 10 Stacked photos, Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 0.5X My next set of testing was conducted at 0.5X magnification, with the same 105mm at f/8. Guess what? The optimal step size was 6 again! Stacking 10 shots, the range shown in focus on the ruler was about 0.65 inches, or 0.065 inches per shot. This shows that the depth of focus went up by more than 4X at half-life-size, compared to life-size. For typical subjects, you’d probably want to stack more than 10 shots at this magnification and f-stop. All that you would need to do is increase the “No. of shots” in the menu to maybe 20 or 30. Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 0.5X, single frame I’m showing a single shot at 0.5X magnification above, using the 105mm at f/8. This single shot still isn’t enough to focus the width of most bugs, but the stacked shot of 10 would have been just fine. 10 Stacked photos, Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 0.25X Switching to 0.25X magnification, my testing showed that the optimal focus shift step size should be 6 once again. Simply amazing! Those Nikon engineers designed a system where a single focus shift step size would work at that whole range of distances! At 0.25X magnification, the 10 stacked shots above now shows an in-focus range on the ruler of about 2.5 inches. The depth of focus for the 105mm at f/8 for 10 stacked shots is getting into a really useful range for many subjects. Micro Nikkor 105mm at f/8, 0.25X, single frame Even at 0.25X magnification and f/8, the depth of focus is still too shallow to be very useful for this 105mm without focus stacking. Micro Nikkor 105mm f/8, 1/10X through infinity For testing something on the scale of landscape photos, you could extend my concept to use a subject like a fence. This would make it easy to evaluate shot-to-shot focus overlap. When you take the shots, the camera will simply stop shooting once it reaches infinity focus (or the end of focus travel), so you don’t have to worry about requesting too many shots in the sequence. Unsurprisingly, the same focus step shift size of 6 worked yet again for f/8. This stack took 29 shots to cover 1/10X through infinity. The camera took a few extra shots beyond infinity, stopping when it got to the end of focus travel. Remember to delete these “beyond infinity” shots before focus-stacking! This shot above demonstrates a major weakness of stacking shots for a landscape: wind. You can see some little ghost branches, etc. It’s a cold reality that you’ll usually end up using things like a healing brush in your editor when stacking shots from the outdoors. Micro Nikkor 105mm f/8, 1/10X. First shot of stack Until you see individual frames from a focus stack, it’s hard to appreciate how much focus depth can be obtained. It’s kind of like getting cataract surgery. How I stacked the test shots I used the free CombineZP program, created by Alan Hadley, to stack all of the shots shown in this article. I used Windows10; you’re out of luck on Apple computers. Something like Helicon Focus (not free) should work on Apple systems. Before the D850 “Focus shift shooting” feature existed, I used my Nikon PB-4 bellows for macro focus stack shooting. In that case, each photo was shot at exactly the same magnification. Using the D850 focus-shift shooting, the photos need to get “scaled” to be the same magnification. The CombineZP program has a few different macros that can solve this ‘magnification change’ problem. If you choose DX mode shooting versus FX mode, you’ll find that the stacking process is maybe 4X faster. Also, CombineZP sometimes has problems with full-size FX images in the TIF format, which changing to DX mode solves. Align (and scale) the shot stack in CombineZP To make a stacked shot, there are basically 6 steps I followed. 1 Convert the raw shots into TIFF format. (I use 16-bit) 2 Open the shots in the CombineZP program 3 Run the Align and Balance Used Frames (Quick) Macro 4 Run the Do Weighted Average Macro 5 Draw a rectangle around the finished stacked shot to trim it 6 Save the rectangle in jpeg (or TIFF) format Because the D850 does focus-shift shooting to create the photos to stack, each focus distance change causes a different magnification. If you merely combined the shots into a stack, none of the shots would match each other in size. The CombineZP program can fix this “scaling” problem, and simultaneously align the shots as well. The CombineZP program doesn’t understand the D850 raw photo format, so I use the free Nikon Capture NX-D program “batch process” feature to easily convert the shots into TIFF format. There are several stacking macros to choose from in this program; you can simply try another macro (or all of them) to see which one you prefer. Thank you Alan Hadley for this excellent program! I do have to mention that the CombineZP program can save images in TIF format, but some of my other editing programs don’t like those files; that’s why I recommend that you additionally save into jpg format, just in case. At least try out your favorite image editor with a file saved as TIF from CombineZP to verify it works okay. By the way, I run the CombineZP program under 64-bit Windows 10. There are other stacking program offerings out there, but I can’t comment on their relative ease or capabilities. You’ll need some other stacking software, such as Helicon Focus for Apple products. Summary For any given lens and f-stop, it’s pretty straightforward to take a series of focus-shifted shots using the Nikon D850 to find an optimal step size. By looking at neighboring shots afterward at 100% magnification, it’s easy to see if the shots share a common zone of focus. If the shots are shifted too much, simply decrease the shift step size and try shooting again. Once you have a “calibrated” step width for your lens and f/stop, it simply becomes a set-and-forget scenario. You can shoot with the confidence that your stacked shots should combine perfectly. If the last shifted photo hasn’t yet gotten enough of your subject into focus, then you can simply command the focus-shift “Start” option again, and the D850 will pick up focus where it left off. You can always increase the total number of shots to take, especially if your estimate was way too low to cover the whole subject. Focus stacking is pretty slow, so you want to minimize how many shots you try to stack. You will find it much easier and quicker to take shots at a lesser magnification (e.g. 0.5X instead of 1.0X) and simply crop the final stacked photo. The D850 has such high resolution that cropping is almost never a problem. If you’re lucky enough to have the 105mm Micro Nikkor, it’s very, very sharp. If you change your shooting to the DX crop mode, the stacking will be much faster, and it will take a fraction of the disk space. I’m amazed that the Nikon engineers designed a “Focus step width” algorithm that would allow a single setting to work with this 105mm lens at any distance for a given f/stop. This feature is going to revolutionize macro photography, which has historically been a very slow and tedious chore. 105mm Micro Nikkor f/8 shift=6, 12 shots, DX mode, 0.25X I tend to use my LED ring light with my macro photos instead of a flash. I really like how smooth the lighting results are, compared to flash.

The upper-end Nikons DSLRs, such as the D6, D850, and D500 have some pretty confusing jargon for their autofocus configuration. The enthusiast Nikon camera focus jargon is perhaps even worse. Nikon’s menu option descriptions tend to keep people from getting the best performance from their cameras. This article explains how I set up my cameras to optimize autofocus, and why. Keep in mind that your camera might be waiting around for a cheap/old lens to respond to its focus commands. To properly evaluate the following suggestions, you will need to select a lens that can “keep up” with your camera. Don’t blame your camera for something that your lens can’t do. And for heaven’s sake, do your testing in sufficient light. In all the tests that follow, I just used the center (cross-type) focus point. My test setup is plenty challenging without introducing off-center focus point comparisons. AF-ON Button (pro-level Nikons) First things first: set up your camera to strictly focus using the “AF-ON” button via your thumb for phase-detect photography. If you have stayed with the shutter button half-press to focus, you need to get over it. Pressing a button with your thumb to focus is simply superior. And stick with continuous autofocus (AF-C); single-focus is totally pointless after you configure your AF-ON button. It should take less than 5 minutes to fall in love with the AF-ON button. Configure your AF-On button You can configure the “AF-ON” button under the “Custom Settings” (pencil) menu, “Controls”, “Custom control assignment”. Specialize the AF-ON button I like to assign both “AF-area mode” and “AF-ON” to my button, and typically assign “D25”. Note in the screen above I have also assigned AF-ON to my depth of field preview (Pv) button with group-area focus. The joystick center button is additionally assigned AF-ON with single-point focus. Where to combine the AF mode with the AF button The dynamic-area focus option prioritizes distant subjects, while the group-area focus option prioritizes the nearest subject. I have a total of three buttons assigned focus duty, with three different ways to autofocus. AF-C Priority Selection Since it’s settled that you should stick with using the AF-ON button for focus (right??), the next setting is the AF-C priority selection: stick with “release priority”. The camera won’t stop you from taking the shot in release-priority mode. If you set the “focus priority” instead, the camera won’t let you take the shot unless it decides the subject is sharp enough. You want to be making this decision yourself and not the camera. Digital is cheap; you can delete the shot later if it’s really out of focus. AF Activation Make sure you make this AF-ON only. Don’t let the shutter button mess with focusing any more. Focus Tracking with Lock-On The Nikon “Custom Settings” (pencil) menu is where you configure autofocus “logic”, which they call Focus tracking with Lock-on. Where to assign the autofocus logic Block shot response ‘Delayed’, motion ‘Steady’ The first topic here is the option “Blocked shot AF response”. I equate this feature to “attention span”. The settings for this option range from “Quick (1)” to “Delayed (5)”. I always leave mine on “Delayed” or 5. With the “Quick” setting, if your subject escapes outside of your collection of focus points, such as the 25 points in “D25”, then your camera will immediately focus on whatever random subject is presently under the middle focus point. This is nearly always bad. If you have your camera “blocked shot AF response” set to “Delayed” or 5, then you’re given some grace time to re-locate your subject and get it back inside your focus point collection. If you can successfully re-locate the subject in time, then your subject focus-tracking simply resumes. This is good. This also assumes you’re pressing the “AF-ON” button the whole time. If you are busy tracking your subject and suddenly notice Bigfoot walking in the background, then all you have to do is briefly stop pressing the AF-ON button and then re-press it after centering your focus sensor over Bigfoot. You have become the master over your attention span, and are no longer at the mercy of your camera. Your camera will now immediately start tracking Bigfoot and forget all about the old subject it was tracking. This is good. I know that people want their focus system to be purely automated, but forcing you to control the “AF-ON” button will get you superior results compared to using the “Quick” blocked-shot response. The second topic here is the option “Subject motion”. The settings range from “Erratic” to “Steady”, and are just beneath the ‘Blocked shot AF response’. Now, you’d think that “Steady” would mean slow, versus “Erratic” meaning fast or quick. After many tests tracking subjects coming straight at the camera, I have found that “Steady” gives slightly more reliable results, and it seems plenty fast, too. This subject motion option means toward/away from the camera. I found that the “Erratic” setting tended to exhibit some focus hesitation or hiccups while tracking subjects moving toward me. The “Steady” setting almost never did, until light levels got too low. I couldn’t find meaningful differences in the speed of focus ability between the two modes. Before I ever tested this configuration, I had assumed that “Erratic” would obviously win for focus speed, but the testing results forced me to change my mind. How I test Focus Tracking I have done lots of tests with a setup that lets me look at frame-to-frame sharpness and also overall lens focus scale behavior during shooting. My tests let me vary the subject speed and light levels. Low-elevation shooting My setup includes using a tripod with a reversed center column holding a lens that has a tripod ring. This hardware lets me rotate the camera into any orientation and keep very low to the ground, so that my (short) moving target comes straight at the camera. Rotating with the tripod ring lets me see the lens focus scale (to record video of its motion). The setup above is testing a Nikon D500 with the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 Sport lens. This is a very quick-focusing lens, which should be able to keep up with the camera. I use a second camera to record video at 120fps while being pointed at the Sigma’s lens focus scale. The video camera uses a wired remote to let me easily trigger recording start/stop. The video lets me closely analyze how the lens focus can hesitate and even exhibit forward/reverse/forward hiccups while tracking a moving subject. This focus action is faster than what people can follow, but reviewing the high-speed video after the fact makes it easy to analyze. Movie mode: assign the shutter release to record movies To enable my wired remote release to start/stop recording video, I have to assign the shutter release to record video as shown above. This only reassigns the shutter button functionality while in video mode. My moving target My moving target with a better focus target on its face To track focus, I get my helper to pull the toy straight at the camera at different speeds and in different light levels. I start the video recording (of the lens focus scale) and then start high-speed shooting (10 fps) as the target gets pulled toward my camera. The flat target on the toy’s face makes it easy for the camera to track the subject. I don’t want to use an ambiguous target distance that will just muddy the results. Before you snicker too much about using this toy target, read on. There’s method to my madness. With this rig, I get to monitor the resolution of each frame to evaluate the quality of focus. I know the exact distances involved, to calculate just how fast the subject is moving (using 10 frames per second shooting), and the video of the focus scale lets me review the smoothness of the lens focus tracking action. Lenses have to work much harder to focus at close distances, because they have to move their glass over larger distances inside the lens. My little tracking rig really stresses the camera focus capabilities, compared to distant subjects. Focus errors are much more obvious at close distances, too. My tests started at about 14 feet from the subject and finished at 4 feet (the minimum focus distance for this lens). The focus system has to work very hard in this scenario, due to moving the internal lens elements so far and also because of the percent distance change to the subject. Because of this, the target doesn’t have to move at blinding speeds (it was moving typically at about 6 feet per second). The depth of focus (135mm f/2.8) at 14 feet is 0.53 feet and it narrows down to just 0.04 feet (12mm) at the 4-foot-away finishing distance. Performing autofocus tests at long distances isn’t nearly as stressful for a camera or the lens. Depth of focus is relatively huge and the internal lens elements have to be moved much less to track the subject. For distance testing, your subject has to move at very high speeds to be as challenging as doing close-up testing. Shooting with this D500 at light levels down to EV 5.9 I didn’t see any slowdown in focus tracking, compared to bright light levels. The “Erratic” subject motion setting had more focus failures than the “Steady” setting did, although it generally recovered focus within 1/10 second (I didn’t get 2 frames in a row out of focus at 10 fps). The differences I noted between Erratic/Steady are subtle. To be honest, I would be hard-pressed to guess at which “Subject motion” setting was being used by conducting these tests. There just wasn’t that much of a difference; both settings generally produced excellent responses that went well beyond my initial expectations. I’d be wary of reviewers claiming obvious differences between the “Subject motion” settings without knowing just how controlled their focus-tracking tests were. Enthusiast Nikons For Nikons like the D610 and the D7000-series (and the current Z cameras), the focus tracking configuration options decrease. You can still assign a button (AE-L AF-L) to give you “AF-ON”, which should be your first priority. Again, stick with AF-C focus. Focus configuration Nikon D610 To adjust the camera’s response to a moving subject, you need to select the “Focus tracking with lock-on” option. Quick subject distance change response is ‘Short’ (1) There isn’t a pair of configuration options like the pro-level Nikons provide. Instead, the options are reduced to a single selection. The Nikon explanation isn’t entirely helpful. Nikon’s focus help The explanation above indicates that you would like to set it to “Short” to quickly react to something coming toward you or away from you. So far, so good. You need to select “Long” to prevent re-focus if you briefly have your subject get outside of your focus point collection (the same as ‘blocked’). The “help” also indicates you need to turn this option off altogether if you are switching between subjects at different distances. (Remember my discussion above about assigning “AF-ON” to a button so that you can handle this task?) These two Nikon explanations are at odds with each other. You really want both quick response to subject distance changes and slow response to re-focus if you briefly lose the subject from your focus point collection (side-to-side motion). Since you can’t have both, I feel the best compromise is the “1 Short” choice. You want the camera to react quickly if your subject suddenly comes towards you or away from you. This choice is a higher priority than having the camera give you a longer grace period to re-acquire your subject. You’re now faced with the added pressure to never let your subject get outside of your focus point collection. You can, of course, change to a larger dynamic area (number of focus points in your collection) to lessen the chance of having the subject escape outside of the focus point box. Now you can see why the ‘pro’ cameras give you a pair of choices for the autofocus logic. After lots of tests using a D610, I am more convinced than ever that it should be relegated to landscape photography. It was woefully inadequate at tracking focus in my tests, unless the target was moving fairly slowly. It didn’t matter which “Focus tracking with lock-on” values I chose; it seemed equally inept at any setting. The contrast to tests done with the D850/D500 was stark, and really makes me appreciate the pro-level autofocus that those cameras possess. My D7100 consistently seems more adept at autofocus than the D610, even though the two cameras are supposed to be roughly equal at autofocus, and they both sport the Expeed 3 processor. My little focus test toy was just too much for the D610 to cope with. I realize I’m overreacting to the D610 results. I just remember the high percentage of lost shots of moving animals and how frustrating that was. My D500 and D850 are so far above its focus capabilities, it’s hard to believe they were all made by the same manufacturer. Conclusion People have very strong opinions when it comes to autofocus. Rather than taking my suggestions at face value, I’d suggest you try some tests on your own. While pressing the AF-ON, try panning your camera off and then back on a static subject to get a feel for the focus “attention span” duration. As you may have inferred, it’s much trickier to evaluate near/far focus behavior. I always try to show how you test something, and not just give you "results" or opinions or regurgitate marketing literature. There are so many elements that go into autofocus results (including practice). To me, this is the most complicated aspect of mastering a camera. The camera models that let you assign different autofocus modes to different buttons are golden, but you still have to train yourself to use them I can’t stress enough that you need to get comfortable with using the AF-ON button (or an assigned button for this purpose). Use your thumb to control when to focus on a different subject; don’t get trapped into the notion that you have to wait for your camera to decide when to refocus on a new target.

I submit for your approval (as Rod Serling used to say) the Neewer R-160S LED ring light. I’d like to bring to your attention a battery-powered LED ring light that was designed for macro photography. The first thing I did after I got it, of course, was to try to misuse this light for portrait photography with an unanticipated lens (the Nikkor 85mm f/1.4). I have used an LED ring light for my macro photography for many years. This particular LED is built like a tank out of anodized aluminum and has to be powered from a voltage supply plugged into a wall socket. To attach this light, there are three tightening screws to press against the macro lens barrel. It’s very limited in which lenses it can be used with, and you have to stay relatively near to a wall socket. The Neewer LED ring light is none of these things. Which is why I got it. It’s really light, portable, and all plastic. Come to think of it, though, how many flashes are made out of metal? Neewer R-160S and Micro Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 on D850 The Neewer LED R-160S is powered by 6 AA batteries (I use rechargeable batteries). It, in fact, comes with a little adapter plug that can be used with an external DC power supply (6-17 volts) that I will never use. The 6 “flower petals” around the ring light house the 6 AA batteries in little slide-open drawers. The Neewer LED is pure plastic (for light weight) and has 160 dimmable LEDs (100% through 10%) that have an advertised color temperature of 5600 Kelvin. It produces up to 1200 Lumens (more than enough power at full output to make models quite angry with you). Little +/- buttons on the rear of the unit control the brightness. Press “-“ before pointing it at a model. This ring light can be mounted three ways: onto your lens filter thread, onto the camera hotshoe, and onto a tripod. The hotshoe/tripod attachment is also included. Its light is specified to cover 45 degrees. I have only tried it on 35, 50, 85, and 105mm lenses so far. Forget 35mm; edges were dark. At 50mm with longer focus distances, you’ll need to fix edges being dimmer with your photo editor; macro range lighting is fine. Illumination is perfect corner-to-corner with lenses longer than 50mm. The provided (anodized aluminum) filter thread attachments come in 49mm/52mm/55mm/62mm/67mm sizes. Personally, I just use the largest provided 67mm adapter and then attach it to either my step-up or step-down rings to use it with my lenses ranging from 52mm to through 77mm filter threads. And now for the bad news. Here’s why I bet at least half of these lights will get returned for a refund: the inner ring lights shine directly into your lens! This is a glaring design faux pas (pun intended). This problem took maybe 2 seconds to discover after I turned on the ring light after mounting it onto my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens. It took maybe another 10 seconds to figure out a cheap and quick fix for this inner-light flare problem. All I had to do was spray black paint over the inner portion of the ring light. For extra credit, you could first spray the inner ring with silver paint and then give it a second coat of black paint. The silver paint would reflect the light back out to your subject, and the black paint coat acts like a lens hood. The finished product is shown in the shot at the top of this article. Neewer light out-of-the-box condition In the shot above, you can see that the inner portion of the ring light is just transparent plastic, lined by many LEDs. This inner portion of lights causes massive lens flare, since the LEDs shine directly into most lenses! What were the designers thinking??? For macro lenses with a deeply-recessed front element, this inner-circle light probably wouldn’t be a problem, and you could leave the ring light unpainted. If you tried using a reverse adapter on the lens, however, this flare problem will really bite you. Some painter’s tape masking I traced and then cut out a circle of painter’s tape to put over the outside of the ring light. I also masked further back where my fingers are seen. Just the inner portion of the ring light is exposed before unleashing the (plastic-compatible) spray paint. Ring light after two coats of black spray paint The shot above shows the ring light post-spraying. After the first coat, I turned on the ring light and discovered that light was still getting through the paint. Those LEDs are really powerful. Two coats of paint stopped any light leaks. Problem solved. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to see if this ring light would work with my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens (filter thread 77mm). Before the paint spraying, this combination was a disaster of light flare. Tripod/Hotshoe mount is included You can mount this light above your camera onto its hotshoe, if you wish. You can also mount it onto a tripod with an attachment that can pivot to aim the light. I’d be careful with this attachment, since it didn’t seem very robust. Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 with 77-72, 72-67 step-down rings Shown above, I attached a pair of step-down rings to connect my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 lens onto the Neewer’s 67mm attachment ring. The 85mm lens has a 77mm filter size. To test how this combination would work, I photographed a blank wall at f/1.4 and saw NO corners cut off and the shot was evenly illuminated. And zero flare from the ring light. Stopping down the lens, the illumination got even better, since the 85 has a fair amount of built-in vignetting when shot wide-open. 85mm f/1.4 with Neewer LED ring light mounted onto the lens The ring light works really well as both a primary and a fill light. Compared to a flash (even with most flash diffusers) the light is just so smooth. Shown above, the light was used to fill the shadows. It’s so nice to see the lighting before the shot instead of after the fact when using a regular flash unit. Note the neutral-gray vase shown above stayed neutral using this light. 105mm f/2.8 Micro Nikkor with Neewer ring light The sunflower was lit entirely by the ring light. It just looks different than using a flash. Focusing is really easy, compared to using a flash. The ring light makes shots look more like they were done in a studio, and they don’t scream “flash”. Macro shot from 15-shot focus stack using Neewer LED light The macro shot above (105mm Micro Nikkor at f/8) at about 0.25X magnification is made from 15 stacked shots. I used the Neewer LED light to provide much more even lighting than a regular flash would have provided. In times past, I would have had to use a different lens to get this shot, because my metal riing light wouldn't fit onto the 105mm Micro Nikkor. In addition, I didn't have to bother with any power cables. Conclusion I bought this light to use for macro photography, so that I won’t have to be tied to a wall outlet anymore with my old ring light. After trying this for more general-purpose photography, I’ve decided it’s going to also get used for portraits; the lighting really minimizes wrinkles. If you haven’t yet noticed, people don’t like their wrinkles showing any more than they have to. Reflections off of the eyes look good, too (no doughnuts). This Neewer R-160S LED ring light definitely isn’t built as robustly as my metal ring light is. I’m pretty careful with my equipment, so that’s not much of a concern for me. If you’re rough with equipment, then you probably shouldn’t get this light. If you are reasonably careful with your equipment, I think that this light can be really useful. If you’re not up to the challenge of a little spray painting project, then you probably won’t be happy with it.