#Combinezm focus stacking drivers#
#Combinezm focus stacking software#

Any camera with a shutter release mechanism. The camera shown is a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, but it should work with Nikon, Sony, etc. The drive is slow enough that it does not dislodge the camera while it moves. Mounting the camera is simply a case of placing it on the platform. The stepper motor drive can be seen in the above image in the bottom right. Once I took the cover and the glass off, I was left with a nice flat platform on which to place my camera, and a 4-wire connection to the stepper motor to drive the platform forward and back. Being a scanner capable of 2400 dpi, it was definitely accurate enough, but would it be able to move a 3KG camera and lens? If I could get at the stepper motor to drive the scan element, maybe I could attach a camera to it and move it in very fine increments, ideal for macro photography. So it hasnРІР‚в„ўt been used in a couple of years.

#Combinezm focus stacking drivers#

ItРІР‚в„ўs so old, that the most recent drivers available for it are for Windows XP. So, I came up with the idea of re-purposing an old flat-bed scanner that I had in the attic gathering dust. Commercial solutions can cost as much as $600, including controller. Once solution is to turn the zoom ring on your lens slightly, but thatРІР‚в„ўs still hit-and-miss on highly magnified images (1:1 and smaller). The difficulty with this is moving the camera accurately at such small distances.

#Combinezm focus stacking software#

You can then combine all the sharp parts of the images together using some free software called CombineZM, and end up with a completely sharp image from front to back of the subject. Each image will have a different part of the subject in focus. A solution to this is to take several images, each one moving closer to the subject by a tiny amount. It can be as little as 0.5mm, depending on the camera settings and magnification youРІР‚в„ўre trying to achieve. ThereРІР‚в„ўs a common issue with shooting macro photography, and thatРІР‚в„ўs the limitation in depth of field (or depth of focus).

This time, itРІР‚в„ўs re-purposing an old flatbed scanner as a macro rail for focus stacking images in macro photography. HereРІР‚в„ўs another in the series of articles of photographic uses for the Raspberry Pi SBC (Single Board Computer).