Guys-

I'm not sure how many of you have looked at last month's N-Scale Railroading's Helicon Focus software article by Rich Yourstone (The same article was reprinted in Model Railroading magazine last month too).

Anyhoo, the software is now available for the Mac, and I downloaded a sample of it to play with. Here's how it works-
You take a series of photos, changing the focus slightly in each one, so the focus shifts toward the background with each digital photo. Then, open the Helicon Focus software, and hit "run".

The software looks at each photo, deletes what's out-of-focus, and pastes it on top of the one before it, building a perfectly-focused photo out of all the images.

Here's a sample- the "Before" photo is the best I can do with my camera shooting at F32 for a couple of seconds. The "After" photo is about 8 photos stitched into one. The models are N-scale, and the background is about 4 feet from the camera, and the bush in the foreground is only a few inches in front of it....

You will probably start seeing a LOT of model photos in magazines run through this software before long!

Have fun,

-Phil

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Model Railroading means..."A Money-Pit filled with Trains"

And now the modeler will need to be sure and 'finish' the scene when using this technique. The good ole days of the narrow focus (small depth of field) of the photo on a specific item and fuzzing out everything else (that's not quite completed) are in jeopardy! It sure is neat that this gives a more real world look at these scenes.

Having the workman in the scene really shows the out of scale (large) size of the n-scale couplers folks yak about on some of the boards. I know, can you photo shop in a scale unit. Or perhaps a token z-scale coupler installation.

You know that I'm only trying to make you do more work on your layout. And I'm sure this would be such a torturous thing.

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Bruce (McToots) McElhoe
KAMRI President
and Web Site Moderator

Phil and Bruce

The difference is very dramatic! It sure does make a difference. I do not think I will be able to get photos to look like that. Thanks to our leaders in the posting world.

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Charlie Womac