Nothing special to do, although i think there are a few new cameras on the market that have some automation of this built into the firmware as of very recent. But the act of bracketing focus is simply taking multiple shots with different focus selected. You did not give much context here but I assume you have a scene where the object/objects are not all in focus as you would like. You tripod the shot, and manually move your auto focus point around and get images across the range of the scene you want in focus. You could also turn off auto focus and dial this in by hand using the barrel of the lens. Once you are happy with the range of images collected you can use your tool such as Photoshop to export images as tiffs which you can turn around and use the merge focus option on those images to provide a image with a wider depth of field than you would get with a lens. This is the only reason I can think you would bracket focus. Before this we simply shot using bellows or TS lens to shift the plain of focus.
Thank you for your response. Sorry for the confusion. I am familiar with the techniques and processes associated with manually focus bracketing. I am looking for the setting on a 70D that 'automates' that process, identical to automated exposure bracketing. I have read on a few places about this function (focus bracketing) being available on the 70D. However, it's always been a bit hazy regarding both the automation and the exact 'place' where ine sets it up in the camera. A couple of people have complained that "it only allows you to bracket two frames" for example. Which certainly implies that the process is an automated function. Thanks again for taking the time to answer my too succinct query. Paul
I would have to look into the user manual, but its not a feature i saw on cameras 10 years ago, its not on my canon 5d4 that i am aware of, and i only saw videos about it in relation to brand new fujis. So i guess I'll just have to do some online digging if i somehow missed this feature. For me it is hard to imagine how well it would work automated, because you would still need to help it decide where to focus, even if through live view touch to focus.
As I read the various posts about it, you set the initial focus manually and 'it' increments the focus. Some have said you can also set the # of frames while others have complained about "not enough frames". The reason these posts were vague is because the bracketing wasn't the subject the authors were complaining or commenting about. Paul
I think the only way to focus stack in the 70D without writing firmware code, is to do it manually as described above, OR, shoot video at the fastest framerate possible and manually move through the focus . Then,use post processing to 'grab' individual frames and use the post-processing package to stack. Discounting a mercantile motive, I wonder why Canon doesn't release new firmware - for the 70D - with this, and other, new capabilities. Supposedly, this focus stacking capability, (as onboard settings), is available on their newer models. Paul
