I recently used your app to try to take a landscape photo on a beach using the LG V20. However, due to the phone's fixed aperture of F1.8, the focal plane was either putting distant objects in focus, or near objects. It would not be able to focus everything in totality. Usually in the case of DSLRs you can get everything in focus by lowering the aperture size to close to F16. However, since that is not an option with a smartphone (at least not that I know of), it would be great if the app could use focus bracketing / focus stacking. In this the camera takes 3 shots at different focal planes and assembles it into one photo with complete focus (kind of like exposure bracketing but with focus as the variable). Even PRO photographers use this technique to get exquisite landscapes where everything is sharp. I was wondering if this feature can be implemented in a future version of this app. To my knowledge, there is no app on the Android Play Store which can currently do this. I would be more than happy to help with this in any way (beta testing included).
Regards,
A. M.
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Yes, this please! There's one I've found (FreeDCam) but it's not in the playstore but on XDA. However, the dev recently seized their activities so it's no longer maintained. I did manage to find an apk, but it's not really working. So, I'd love for this cam to be able to take multiple pictures shifting to multiple focus points!
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Thanks for the hint to this app. It keeps crashing constantly on me but at least it showed me by its video timelapse function that my camera / device (without support of Camera2 API) is capable of lower fps than Open Camera's 15 fps!
If this setting does really only give a "recommendation" to the camera (like the FAQs do state), then does the choice of values really have to be that much restricted?
A simple input field for giving users the possibility to input their own values would be nice. FreeDCam does allow values as small as 0.2 fps. (It has a little bug though that it still sets the value in the result's metadata to the default 30 fps. But that's not a problem if you want to postprocess the timelapse anyway.)
So, could Open Camera please provide a more free way to input video fps?
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I'm still working on it, but still a fair way off I'm afraid - I'm also working on other algorithms like panorama and image averaging, which are making better progress.
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Hi,
as a quick (and maybe dirty) idea:
Wouldn't it be enough for a first try to automatically "auto-focus" into some more or less equally distributed areas (let the user choose the pattern and pattern resolution) and take single shots of the results?
Personally, I am not interested in doing the actual stacking procedure on the phone. I would just copy the single shots to the PC and do the rest there.
Secondly, this approach would have some definitive advantage compared to a full implementation of the normal “define a focus range and stepping and use this for shooting”-approach. It should be usable also for the pitiful Camera1-API-users!
I, as a Samsung user, do count myself to this group. Even with Android 6.x on my device I cannot use the manual focus --- which, as I suppose, would also prevent me from using the complete focus-stacking-feature!?
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Thanks for the ideas. Yes just taking the photos and not doing the stacking on the phone would be easier to implement. Also good points about using standard focus regions instead of manual focus, I'll see how well that works.
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The second idea came to me when I was looking into PC tools like Enfuse which does the actual stacking. It does not require any information about focus settings or other cameras parameters. It does not need EXIF information at all; the order of the input images is also irrelevant. It does detect and mask the focus plane just by analysing the plain image data.
That means, the focus range has not to be divided equally. It's also no problem if more than one source image has the same focus setting (if the used focus regions resulted in the same focus value).
More important it is to cover the whole valid range. That’s not done naturally if you use arbitrarily positioned focus regions. Just imagine a macro shot of some insect or other small object (default example of photo stacking): If you (or the user who selected the setting) did choose to use only four focus regions equally distributed on the preview, it’s very likely to happen that none of these does actually hit the object of interest!
Since this cannot be decided automatically in an easy way, I would like to give the user full control over the used focus regions, either on the base of some presettings (which were prepared before - e.g. regions on a diagonal through the image with more positions at the centre than to the borders of the photo) or on a life chosen configuration (touching the preview on screen to mark the desired focus regions right before “the shot” [the result should be cached for re-using right away, with an option to save as a new presetting for later]).
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Hi mark, are you still working on this feature? i would love to see it integrated into Open camera
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2018-04-06
Hi, Is it possible to pledge some money into development of focus bracketing for OpenCamera ? I could really use this functionality and I'm willing to support development of this feature.
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2018-04-12
I imagine that proof of concept Is that Focus Bracketing might work in a similar way as HDR Bracketing.
Example of workflow:
1. Focus on a selected spot
2. Enable focus bracketing with X (5) images.
3. Take image. (Because OpenCamera is supporting Manual Focus - we can than take 1 picture with selected focus. X(2) pictures moved few % of focus distance to the front. X (2) pictures in the back.
4. User can post-process this image. ( As it's too computationally expensive)
I'd like to be able to use this function during Macro-Timelapses.
I'm willing to pledge 100$ to develop this functionality. ( Using https://www.bountysource.com/ or similar service)
I don't think this functionality is that hard to develop but it's sadly beyond my developer skills.
Anyone willing to accept a challenge ?
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Seems like it is possible to automaticlly create several shots with fixed focus steps and OpenCamera. Then combine images using https://sourceforge.net/p/hugin/hugin/ci/default/tree/ and align_image_stack utility. A bit work porting align_image_stack as a jni library it not a big deal. And automating OpenCamera to make several shots in special focus stacking mode (need a bit practice to see what options needed, how deep focus should be, which deep to start, how fast it going to work, etc...)
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I started to look at such an algorithm for merging focus stacked images, but had the problem that there was a significant difference in the images from lens distortion (i.e., alignment correction not being sufficient to correct for this).
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2018-06-21
With android phone cameras getting so much better than they used to be (think about the Huawei P20 Pro and using the "Zomei 0.6X Wide Angle Macro Lens with Clip 37mm" on it) focus bracketing is going to be the coolest thing IMO so I can't wait to see you implement this feature, but please don't let it be just a gimmick with too restricted user settings. Various tutorials on how to do focus stacking in Photoshop exist on the internet so only the focus bracketing part is what we really need... looking at what Helicon Remote app can achieve with a full-fledged DSLR camera via USB OTG is why we need focus bracketing on our phones' built-in cameras.
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No APKs yet, I'm hoping to move to a release in the next couple of weeks, but quickest would be to compile it yourself (the Git repository has latest code).
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Anonymous
Anonymous
-
2018-08-22
It is grate feature to have! Thanks Mark!
Seems like focus brakets not very clever tho... As it seems step length calculated based on number of steps from settings and focus distance to travel. When taking macro photos focus jumping fast from focused image to unfocused in one step. Would be better if distance calculaged using log1() algorithm (same as sound volume calculated in android or any other sound apps).
Also would be nice to have keep previous focus settings between app restarts (keep old macro settings focus values). Or having auto focus + focus brakets all totheger. If user clicks on screen then current focus distance set to the focus brakets initial values. One click on screen instead of two clicks on each focus braket progress bars.
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I recently used your app to try to take a landscape photo on a beach using the LG V20. However, due to the phone's fixed aperture of F1.8, the focal plane was either putting distant objects in focus, or near objects. It would not be able to focus everything in totality. Usually in the case of DSLRs you can get everything in focus by lowering the aperture size to close to F16. However, since that is not an option with a smartphone (at least not that I know of), it would be great if the app could use focus bracketing / focus stacking. In this the camera takes 3 shots at different focal planes and assembles it into one photo with complete focus (kind of like exposure bracketing but with focus as the variable). Even PRO photographers use this technique to get exquisite landscapes where everything is sharp. I was wondering if this feature can be implemented in a future version of this app. To my knowledge, there is no app on the Android Play Store which can currently do this. I would be more than happy to help with this in any way (beta testing included).
Regards,
A. M.
Thanks for the suggestion, this is something I'd like to do. I started to look at this, but still researching algorithms to do this.
Yes, this please! There's one I've found (FreeDCam) but it's not in the playstore but on XDA. However, the dev recently seized their activities so it's no longer maintained. I did manage to find an apk, but it's not really working. So, I'd love for this cam to be able to take multiple pictures shifting to multiple focus points!
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Thanks for the hint to this app. It keeps crashing constantly on me but at least it showed me by its video timelapse function that my camera / device (without support of Camera2 API) is capable of lower fps than Open Camera's 15 fps!
If this setting does really only give a "recommendation" to the camera (like the FAQs do state), then does the choice of values really have to be that much restricted?
A simple input field for giving users the possibility to input their own values would be nice. FreeDCam does allow values as small as 0.2 fps. (It has a little bug though that it still sets the value in the result's metadata to the default 30 fps. But that's not a problem if you want to postprocess the timelapse anyway.)
So, could Open Camera please provide a more free way to input video fps?
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Hi! Any news on this please?
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Last edit: Wouter 2017-11-06
Whoops, sorry, that was my (anonymous) bad! Still loving an update on this!
I'm still working on it, but still a fair way off I'm afraid - I'm also working on other algorithms like panorama and image averaging, which are making better progress.
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Hi,
as a quick (and maybe dirty) idea:
Wouldn't it be enough for a first try to automatically "auto-focus" into some more or less equally distributed areas (let the user choose the pattern and pattern resolution) and take single shots of the results?
Personally, I am not interested in doing the actual stacking procedure on the phone. I would just copy the single shots to the PC and do the rest there.
Secondly, this approach would have some definitive advantage compared to a full implementation of the normal “define a focus range and stepping and use this for shooting”-approach. It should be usable also for the pitiful Camera1-API-users!
I, as a Samsung user, do count myself to this group. Even with Android 6.x on my device I cannot use the manual focus --- which, as I suppose, would also prevent me from using the complete focus-stacking-feature!?
Thanks for the ideas. Yes just taking the photos and not doing the stacking on the phone would be easier to implement. Also good points about using standard focus regions instead of manual focus, I'll see how well that works.
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The second idea came to me when I was looking into PC tools like Enfuse which does the actual stacking. It does not require any information about focus settings or other cameras parameters. It does not need EXIF information at all; the order of the input images is also irrelevant. It does detect and mask the focus plane just by analysing the plain image data.
That means, the focus range has not to be divided equally. It's also no problem if more than one source image has the same focus setting (if the used focus regions resulted in the same focus value).
More important it is to cover the whole valid range. That’s not done naturally if you use arbitrarily positioned focus regions. Just imagine a macro shot of some insect or other small object (default example of photo stacking): If you (or the user who selected the setting) did choose to use only four focus regions equally distributed on the preview, it’s very likely to happen that none of these does actually hit the object of interest!
Since this cannot be decided automatically in an easy way, I would like to give the user full control over the used focus regions, either on the base of some presettings (which were prepared before - e.g. regions on a diagonal through the image with more positions at the centre than to the borders of the photo) or on a life chosen configuration (touching the preview on screen to mark the desired focus regions right before “the shot” [the result should be cached for re-using right away, with an option to save as a new presetting for later]).
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Hi mark, are you still working on this feature? i would love to see it integrated into Open camera
Hi, Is it possible to pledge some money into development of focus bracketing for OpenCamera ? I could really use this functionality and I'm willing to support development of this feature.
I imagine that proof of concept Is that Focus Bracketing might work in a similar way as HDR Bracketing.
Example of workflow:
1. Focus on a selected spot
2. Enable focus bracketing with X (5) images.
3. Take image. (Because OpenCamera is supporting Manual Focus - we can than take 1 picture with selected focus. X(2) pictures moved few % of focus distance to the front. X (2) pictures in the back.
4. User can post-process this image. ( As it's too computationally expensive)
I'd like to be able to use this function during Macro-Timelapses.
I'm willing to pledge 100$ to develop this functionality. ( Using https://www.bountysource.com/ or similar service)
I don't think this functionality is that hard to develop but it's sadly beyond my developer skills.
Anyone willing to accept a challenge ?
Just to say I'm still working on this, haven't forgotten about it, but other features/fixes have been taking priority too.
That´s nice to hear. Have you made the decision regarding stacking being done inapp or not?
It'll be just producing the images for now (requiring any focus stacking be done by another application - as that's a lot more work!)
Seems like it is possible to automaticlly create several shots with fixed focus steps and OpenCamera. Then combine images using https://sourceforge.net/p/hugin/hugin/ci/default/tree/ and align_image_stack utility. A bit work porting align_image_stack as a jni library it not a big deal. And automating OpenCamera to make several shots in special focus stacking mode (need a bit practice to see what options needed, how deep focus should be, which deep to start, how fast it going to work, etc...)
I started to look at such an algorithm for merging focus stacked images, but had the problem that there was a significant difference in the images from lens distortion (i.e., alignment correction not being sufficient to correct for this).
With android phone cameras getting so much better than they used to be (think about the Huawei P20 Pro and using the "Zomei 0.6X Wide Angle Macro Lens with Clip 37mm" on it) focus bracketing is going to be the coolest thing IMO so I can't wait to see you implement this feature, but please don't let it be just a gimmick with too restricted user settings. Various tutorials on how to do focus stacking in Photoshop exist on the internet so only the focus bracketing part is what we really need... looking at what Helicon Remote app can achieve with a full-fledged DSLR camera via USB OTG is why we need focus bracketing on our phones' built-in cameras.
Focus bracketing photo mode now added for the next version (1.44) (requires Camera2 API to be enabled).
are there apk's for 1.44 or should i compile it myself? i can't seem to find it
No APKs yet, I'm hoping to move to a release in the next couple of weeks, but quickest would be to compile it yourself (the Git repository has latest code).
okido, ill try to get my system to compile :)
It is grate feature to have! Thanks Mark!
Seems like focus brakets not very clever tho... As it seems step length calculated based on number of steps from settings and focus distance to travel. When taking macro photos focus jumping fast from focused image to unfocused in one step. Would be better if distance calculaged using log1() algorithm (same as sound volume calculated in android or any other sound apps).
public static float log1(float v, float m) { float log1 = (float) (Math.log(m - v) / Math.log(m)); return 1 - log1; } public static float log1(float v) { return log1(v, 2); }Also would be nice to have keep previous focus settings between app restarts (keep old macro settings focus values). Or having auto focus + focus brakets all totheger. If user clicks on screen then current focus distance set to the focus brakets initial values. One click on screen instead of two clicks on each focus braket progress bars.