Can I use focus stacking to get live nd ?

[amit]

I just thought about it , dont have any of these features in my em10.
What if I stand in front of a river and do a 30 photo burst in focus stacking mode ?
Will I get a silky river?

 

[SrMiPhoto]

I just thought about it , dont have any of these features in my em10.
What if I stand in front of a river and do a 30 photo burst in focus stacking mode ?
Will I get a silky river?

No. Focus stacking takes only the sharp parts of each image and assembles it. It does not 'merge' images like ND filter. As mentioned, you can do it in post.

 

[pdk42]

Live Comp is close to Live ND, but the min exposure time is 0.5s which is probably too long for daytime exposures unless you fit a real ND filter. However, if you take a burst of shots on continuous low at its slowest setting and then stack later in LR, PS etc, then you’ll get the same effect.

 

[PakkyT]

I just thought about it , dont have any of these features in my em10.
What if I stand in front of a river and do a 30 photo burst in focus stacking mode ?
Will I get a silky river?

As pointed out already, you don't want focus stacking mode since that will slightly change the focus point in each picture. Instead what you want to do is simply take a series of shots all at the same settings and then if you stack those with averaging you can get a ND effect.

A quick inter-webs search turned up this page that gives the method you are asking about...
How to Simulate Long Exposure using Stacked Image Averaging

 

[amit]

As pointed out already, you don't want focus stacking mode since that will slightly change the focus point in each picture. Instead what you want to do is simply take a series of shots all at the same settings and then if you stack those with averaging you can get a ND effect.

A quick inter-webs search turned up this page that gives the method you are asking about...
How to Simulate Long Exposure using Stacked Image Averaging

Thanks , is there an option to merge in camera?

 

[PakkyT]

Thanks , is there an option to merge in camera?

Usually no, but especially no in the E-M10 series. While that stacking technique looks like a nice work around, especially if you are somewhere with a nice scene and didn't bring your ND filter, it is a pain in the neck to do and you really need either a tripod of a solid surface to put the camera on for all the shots. You might instead simply look into getting a ND filter. Simple to use, one shot, sometimes you can do it handheld, and no merging later on.

You don't have to get a really expensive one either. Most of the lower values in density are fairly good across a lot of budget brands (think Tiffin, etc.). It is when you you get to the higher ND values like 10 stop or variable ND filters that you see a lot more variation across brand with things like color shift. So a basic 3-stop filter will serve a lot of your general purpose shooting. You can also sometimes get away with using a polarizing filter (good to have anyway) which are usually a stop or so of light loss and turning your aperture down enough to slow the shutter enough to get a smoother water effect.

You can get a single ND filter sized for your largest lens for something like $12-$30 and then step up rings (a few bucks each) to mounts it on your smaller lenses. Alternatively, one trick is to use square filters, the kind that normally go into holders. You can buy just the filter sized big enough to cover your largest lens and simply hold it in front of the lens when taking the photo. You do not need to invest in the whole square filter holding system if you are only going to use the one filter.