PS with focus bracketing Raw is the way to go IMHO
It's certainly one option for stacking. Probably the most influential factors on workflow choice are whether it's field or studio image capture, the total number of MP needing to be processed, the available camera body and computing capacity in post, budget (if any) for changing those, and approach to archiving brackets.
If the fps limitations and increases in processing time imposed by using raw are acceptable and the stack is compatible with Photoshop's entry-level implementation then, sure, it follows you'll get fine results that way. However, I'd be hesitant to suggest it at higher frame counts on considerations of bracket acquisition duration, processing time, and stacker abilities.
In regards to Panasonic's ability to influence stacking workflows, the changes which seem most likely to occur are higher bit rates and incremental increases in bit depth for post-focus along with the ongoing gradual increase in fps and buffer size which helps a little with focus bracketing. For some time now, ILC manufacturers have been converging to a platform model for cost containment and I suspect that extends to reuse of processing engine ASICs as well as sensors. So my current guess is Panasonic's waterfall will probably be S or video line introductions that move to GH and G single digit, then G(X) two and three digit.
Panasonic enables different encodings on different bodies but the most prevalent offering of interest for increasing pixel-level image quality on vNext G series post focus is probably 4k 4:2:2 24p 400 Mb/s, though it's unclear if post focus can use that or only goes with 30p. Panasonic 8k introduction would presumably bring 500-1300 Mbit/s to compete with Canon (1900-2400 Mbit/s if they want to match RED) and 8k post focus. I think assessing the value of that will probably require getting whatever the hardware ends up being and comparing 4k, 6k, and 8k versions of stacks though.
I have it mapped to a button, too.
Me too. Maybe the most useful small change Panasonic could make for focus stacking would be enabling the manual focus ring in post focus so that it wasn't constantly necessary to toggle in and out of post focus in order to preview different parts of the bracket. Sure, you see something of the bracket on the initial depth scan and again as the bracket proceeds but that doesn't help much for composing. Or for ensuring the camera's positioned so that objects aren't closer than the minimum focus distance in setting up macro images.
Panny did rewrite DFD system from scratch for S5
Source? All I can find is one block of widely repeated text (DPR to rumour sites) which claims 1) performance improvement of existing feature recognition and tracking code and 2) AI feature additions. I'm unable to locate any evidence of S5 specific changes at the DFD level.
description of updated 6k (18MP image) Post Focus system sounds just like the one you described
Source? The S5 manual is, if anything, more cryptic than the m43 manuals and I'm unable to locate any description indicating post-focus implementation changes anywhere in the S line.
Me neither. Whilst I'd be delighted to have the thousands needed to afford an S5 and lenses for it, if I wanted to lug around a 135 system I wouldn't be using m43. A corollary of that is, if I had thousands for an L mount system, I'd get better pictures by using the money to take several months off work and go places with the m43 kit than having a 135 system but being camera poor. Not that it'd be a great idea right at the moment but my budget's not one where there's so many thousands that buying an L, Z, R, E, or X system now and taking off with it later would be a possibility later.
