Guide

Focus bracketing by camera

Most cameras made in the last few years can shoot a focus bracket for you: you set how many frames and how far the focus moves between them, press the shutter once, and the camera walks the focus from near to far. Here is where each maker hides the setting, what the settings mean, and which cameras can also merge the series themselves.

Menu names and ranges are as the makers' manuals describe them; they vary between bodies and firmware versions, so check your own manual for the exact tab. How to choose the step and the number of frames is the same for every camera, and the calculator does the arithmetic.

Canon · Nikon · Sony · Fujifilm · OM System and Olympus · Panasonic Lumix

Canon (EOS R system)

Where it is: Focus bracketing, in the shooting menu of EOS R bodies.
Settings: Number of shots (2 to 999), Focus increment (1 = narrow to 10 = wide) and Exposure smoothing.
Merges in the camera?: Recent bodies (for example the EOS R7, R10 and R6 Mark II) add Depth compositing, which merges the series into one JPEG or HEIF in the camera and crops the edges; the source frames are kept. Canon's free Digital Photo Professional software also has a Depth Compositing tool.
Worth knowing: The lens must support focus bracketing; most RF lenses do. Check your camera's manual for the exact menu tab.

Nikon (most Z bodies, D850, D780)

Where it is: Focus shift shooting, in the photo shooting menu.
Settings: Number of shots (up to 300), Focus step width (1 to 10), Interval until next shot, an exposure setting (First-frame exposure lock on Z bodies, Exposure smoothing on the D850), Silent photography, and Starting storage folder — which puts each series in its own folder, the easiest way to keep brackets apart.
Merges in the camera?: No: neither the camera nor Nikon's NX Studio merges a focus series. Newer Z bodies can make a peaking preview of the in-focus areas, which is a check, not a merge.
Worth knowing: Autofocus must be able to drive the lens; set the closest point of the subject as the starting focus.

Sony (recent Alpha bodies)

Where it is: Focus Bracket, a drive mode on recent bodies (for example the α7R V, α7 IV with current firmware and α1 II).
Settings: Number of shots (2 to 299) and Step Width (1 to 10), set in the bracket settings.
Merges in the camera?: No: the camera does not merge the series. Bodies without Focus Bracket can still be bracketed by hand, focusing a little further for each frame.
Worth knowing: Start the series focused on the nearest point of the subject.

Fujifilm (X and GFX)

Where it is: Focus BKT, chosen in the drive mode's bracketing settings on bodies such as the X-T5, X-H2 and GFX100 II.
Settings: AUTO, where you mark the nearest and farthest points and the camera works out the frames, or MANUAL: Frames, Step (1 to 10) and Interval.
Merges in the camera?: No: the camera does not merge the series.
Worth knowing: This stacker reads X-Trans RAF files directly, at a third of the sensor's size (the only size its decoder makes for that pattern). For a full-resolution stack, export the frames from your RAW software as 16-bit TIFF in sRGB and stack those.

OM System and Olympus

Where it is: Focus BKT (Focus Bracketing), in the shooting menu's bracketing settings; many bodies also offer a separate Focus Stacking mode.
Settings: Number of shots (up to 999) and Focus differential (1 to 10).
Merges in the camera?: Yes, on many bodies (for example the OM-1, OM-5 and E-M1 series): Focus Stacking merges a short series (3 to 15 frames) into a JPEG in the camera and crops the edges slightly, with compatible lenses. For a longer series or the RAW data, bracket and stack them here.
Worth knowing: The merged result is a JPEG; the source frames are saved too, in the quality you set.

Panasonic Lumix

Where it is: Focus Bracket, in the bracketing settings of Lumix G and S bodies.
Settings: Step (1 to 10), Number of images, and the sequence.
Merges in the camera?: Many Lumix bodies also have Post Focus, which records a short focus sweep as 4K or 6K video, and a Focus Stacking step in playback that merges frames from it into a JPEG in the camera.
Worth knowing: A Post Focus file is video-resolution; Focus Bracket gives full-resolution frames to stack here.

The step setting is not a distance

Every maker's step is a number from 1 to 10, not millimetres. The camera scales it to the aperture and the focus distance, so the same number moves the focus further at f/11 than at f/2.8. Start in the middle (3 to 5), shoot a test series, and look at the overlap: if a band between two frames is soft in the merge, the step is too wide.

When the camera merges, and when to stack yourself

An in-camera merge is a JPEG of a short series, cropped, with no control over how it was done. Stack the frames yourself when you want the RAW data, a longer series, a 16-bit file, or to check the result at 100 % before you keep it. Copy the whole series to the computer, keep each bracket in its own folder, and drop the frames on the stacker — RAW straight from any of these cameras is fine.