Layout Photography in the Digital Age

Between the availability of affordable, professional-quality digital cameras and some very sophisticated new software, razor-sharp images with virtually infinite depth of field are now a reality, making pinhole photography a thing of the past. This preliminary clinic provides a brief introduction, as I am just now beginning to explore this exciting new frontier.

Once I purchased my Canon 20D digital SLR, I realized there was no turning back to film. Anxious to give it a try on Rick Spano's Sceniced and Undecided, I set it up on a tripod and fired off a few shots. Although the initial results were impressive, I thought that I could be clever and take things even further in my "digital darkroom" by blending two images shot at different focal points. Initially the results were quite encouraging—that is, until one evening when Rick showed me the latest issue of N Scale Railroading magazine...

A fellow by the name of Rich Yourstone has been experimenting with Helios Focus, an image-processing application created principally for research. The software combines any number of photographs of the same subject taken at different focal points, blending the sharpest regions of each into one final image. A typical application would be microphotography, where the depth of field is inherently paper-thin but the subject invariably is not. When used for model photography, however, "stunning" does not begin to describe the final effect!

But the adventure did not stop there; at my job, I happen to work with some scientists who I subsequently learned regularly employ "image stacking," and after discussing the technique with a colleague who specializes in microphotography of crystal structures, he recommended a competitive product, CombineZ, as being slightly superior to Helios—as well as being free, open-source software. There is even a detailed side-by-side comparison of Helios and CombineZ. Based on this information, I may actually get both.

Needless to say the stars have aligned and I now have new tools and techniques that I will be employing for my future model photography. It gives me a great deal to look forward to when I finally get to start building a new layout.

This clinic is something of a living document—it will be updated as I learn and do more, so check back again sometime.

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