Lens News

Panasonic announced today it will soon start offering an innovative new photographic function called “Post Focus” in some of its Lumix cameras. The feature allows photographers to capture multiple photos with multiple in-focus points through a single release of the shutter.

Panasonic's Post Focus technology was announced this past summer. The Post Focus function will first be offered for the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX8, DMC-G7 and DMC-FZ300 by updating to the latest free firmware upgrade, which will be available starting on November 25, 2015 at the LUMIX Global Customer Support Site.

Post Focus uses Panasonic’s high-speed, high-precision, 49-area DFD (Depth From Defocus) auto focus technology to capture 4K (3840x2160 pixels) images at 30 fps. The Post Focus function seems simple and relatively easy to use. According to Panasonic, you just set the camera to Post Focus mode and press the shutter button. The camera then automatically “racks” the focus while capturing photos with varied in focus points. During playback, you use the touch screen to select the in focus area desired, and save as a separate 8-megapixel photo file.

To assist in getting a good image, you can use Focus Peaking, 5x magnified view and fine adjustment functions.. The process can be repeated to get multiple images as many times as desired from the original photo.

The Post Focus function is best for non-moving subjects, such as portraits or landscapes, and is ideal for shooting at wide apertures to create dramatic, shallow depth of field effects. Create different impressions out of a single shot by changing the highlighted subject after capturing the picture, taking the risk and anxiety out of getting that perfect picture.

This capability will also assist advanced users interested in macro photography. Just capture the scene using the same process, then use third party software to perform “focus stacking”, to combine multiple frames into a single image, which has more areas in tack-sharp focus for amazing results in a fraction of the time typically needed for great macro images.