Helicon to the rescue.

Go to Helicon’s web site and you will, understandably, see many examples of the use of this application in insect photography. That’s a natural given the miniscule depth of field for such small subjects in extreme close-up.

But how about at the other end of the spectrum, when used with really long lenses?

Well, it turns out Helicon Focus is every bit as capable.

In the following example I was taking snaps of the maple tree, in full fall color, at a very close distance (maybe 15 feet) using the 400mm lens at maximum aperture. This renders the background as a complete blur, but also very much restricts depth of focus in the subject, as this picture discloses:

Maple leaves. 5D, 400mm ‘L’, 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 250

I took nine images with the lens on manual focus focusing through the depth of the subject. Helicon refused to combine these, so I took out the first and last (which, on closer examination, had nothing sharp anywhere) and tried again. Success.

Composite of seven images using Helicon Focus. Manual exposure setting.

Why not simply close down the aperture and take one snap? First, that would dictate a very slow shutter speed with the attendant risk of camera shake even though the camera was mounted on a solid tripod. Second, there’s no guarantee at these short distances that everything would, in fact, be sharp, as 400mm lenses have little depth of field at any aperture, and depth-of-field preview in SLRs is near useless at small apertures. The Helicon approach generates an image which simply pops from the background while in no way changing the blur. Formerly blurred twigs now no longer detract from the image and the result is dramatic and natural looking.

Snags? Well, your subject has to be stationary, you must use a tripod and on close examinaton you can see some ghosting here and there:

Detail of ‘ghosting’ in the combined image

But when you realize that this enlargement is consonant with a print size of 40″ x 30″ and the effect is not objectionable, it’s something I can easily live with when balanced against the advantages of the technique. And who knows? When Danylo Kozub and his fellow geniuses at Helicon release the much awaited updated Mac version maybe even this minor issue will be resolved?

So Helicon is not just for the macro and microscope photographers amongst us.