Liverwort Macro

LOL! wrote:
Tim Conway wrote:
Paul Furman wrote
Alan Browne wrote:
Paul Furman wrote:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

How did you control the focus steps?

I bolted a micrometer to the front of the bellows:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehill/4172437271/
It's basically just a finely threaded screw that pushes the bellows
closed. There are lots of ways to go, probably the best would be mount the
camera or subject stage on a focus block salvaged from a microscope, or a
small machinist's table. The rest of my rig is for positioning x,y& tilt.

FANTASTIC! Let's see the P&S troll say something about this. NO point and
shoot that I've ever seen is capable of this. Bellows and a good lens etc.
always does macro best. You took it to the next level. :-)

My comment on that... lost in a followup re-direct:

P&S can generally work fine, you just can't get the lens off to focus a
macro lens directly. I'm tempted to get a micro 4/3 camera for this,
because frankly all that mirror slapping is a pain. Microscope
objectives are hard to get to cover a 35mm frame but the best macro
bellows lenses project a larger image circle probably better suited to
medium format or even large format. Microscope objectives however
deliver more resolution in the center than a DSLR sensor can make use of
sigh.

Panorama stitching presents major problems because of the same parallax
issues, when stepping the zoom, it would be ideal to not move the
position of the entrance pupil but in practice that usually means large
magnification changes. You just keep running into limitations whichever
direction you turn with macro/micro stuff. Fun challenge though!


Best? There's enough hazy softness in these images to emergency-land an
airplane safely.

Yeah, it's very difficult to rival the pixel level sharpness of
conventional photography. I was already at f/22 which is diffraction
limited on my sensor and I've taken it to 36x f/74 to get a little more
detail however with *very* poor pixel level sharpness:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...n/photostream/
-that seems ridiculous but it resolved more detail in the tip than
anything short of a microscope objective.

I could stop down a little to reduce the glow/halo artifacts but would
lose some detail with that move. I've tested it. Soft lighting helps.
Microscope objectives are sharper but also faster so the halos & stuff
get worse and you have to be even more careful with lighting, even
smaller steps. Aperture is what buys you detail.


Had he used the right equipment he could have obtained the DOF required
without any of the ugly soft edges by using larger apertures

Uh, nope. The lens I used stops down from f/2 to f/16 (as a theoretical
infinity metric) - f/16 would translate into f/176 for this shot. That
would be smart if I only wanted a postage stamp though: a lot less work.
Or shoot at less magnification & crop.

* Paul Furman wrote :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

Nice work. Good stack. 300 frames - whoah...

--
Troy Piggins

"Troy Piggins" wrote in message
...
* Paul Furman wrote :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

Nice work. Good stack. 300 frames - whoah....

I think it's quite an achievement - way over my little head. ;-)

Paul Furman wrote:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

Wow,
high tech, low tech and the skills to put it all together and make it work.

I am impressed.

Gotta love your set-up picture complete with light diffuser.

This is pushing the envelop and getting results

Walter Banks

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:38:43 -0000, "Richard"
wrote:


"Paul Furman" wrote in message
...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for a
total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to get
started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

Now that is impressive.


Me too!

Damnation, I can't find it on my bookshelves which means it's still in
the garage, but there's a UK photographer who does work like that
using very powerful, very fast electronic flash

Give me a couple of years to either find the book or remember his name
and I'll get back to you

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:07:21 +0000, Albert Ross
wrote:

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:38:43 -0000, "Richard"
wrote:


"Paul Furman" wrote in message
...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for a
total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to get
started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

Now that is impressive.


Me too!

Damnation, I can't find it on my bookshelves which means it's still in
the garage, but there's a UK photographer who does work like that
using very powerful, very fast electronic flash

Give me a couple of years to either find the book or remember his name
and I'll get back to you

Stephen Dalton

http://www.stephendalton.co.uk/

(beware of the Flash)

Paul Furman wrote:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

What did you use to post-processes 300 frames?

Walter..

Walter Banks wrote:
Paul Furman wrote:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...7623505759735/
-original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per step for
a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for young plants to
get started then a raindrop splashes them out to spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...759735/detail/

What did you use to post-processes 300 frames?

Well, I didn't shoot in raw so getting the exposure right is important
and a custom white balance. Stacking tends to increase contrast and it's
hard to know if some important bright shiny spot will appear at some
point so a little underexposure is wise.

From above: "I use Zerene Stacker which has a nice feature for
scrolling through the set cloning parts of different layers for final
cleanup and to remove dust streaks." 300 frames takes a pretty powerful
computer, I had a 64 bit loaner for that, it probably would crash on my
3-year old laptop but they can be broken down in smaller subsets and
stack the results. There is no way I could open more than a dozen 12 MP
layers in photoshop for masking but this does quite well.


--
Paul Furman
www.edgehill.net
www.baynatives.com

all google groups messages filtered due to spam

Paul Furman wrote:

Walter Banks wrote:


What did you use to post-processes 300 frames?

Well, I didn't shoot in raw so getting the exposure right is important
and a custom white balance. Stacking tends to increase contrast and it's
hard to know if some important bright shiny spot will appear at some
point so a little underexposure is wise.

From above: "I use Zerene Stacker which has a nice feature for
scrolling through the set cloning parts of different layers for final
cleanup and to remove dust streaks." 300 frames takes a pretty powerful
computer, I had a 64 bit loaner for that, it probably would crash on my
3-year old laptop but they can be broken down in smaller subsets and
stack the results. There is no way I could open more than a dozen 12 MP
layers in photoshop for masking but this does quite well.

A mind boggling amount of work overall.

Thanks

w..

Paul Furman vehemently accused in
:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...zes/l/in/set-7
2157623505759735/ -original size is worth clicking

This was made from a stack of 300 frames at about 7 microns per
step for a total depth of 2mm. These little cups hold water for
young plants to get started then a raindrop splashes them out to
spread.

A few more he
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgehil...505759735/deta
il/

Paul,
Great job! Love the translucent on 2 (3?) different planes of
interest.
Too much work for me, I like chasing bugs, but stacking sounds
like hard work.
Willa