Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

Here are two funnel web spiders (Agelenopsis sp.) that I had recently photo stacked on the dining room table / photo studio. The first is a female. She was happy to sit in her web retreat during these sessions.
Funnel web spider, focus stacked by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Next is a male who was hanging out in the web of a female for several days. He was surprisingly content to sit very still provided that I was careful working around him. But a slight bump of the table: Off in a flash.
Male funnel web spider, focus stacked by Mark Sturtevant, on Flickr

Both of these stacks (and several others of these spiders) were done in order to try a free trial of 'Zerene Stacker Pro', which, among other things, has a protocol called "Slabbing". In slabbing, the large set of pictures are first prepared in a series of mini-stacks, called "slabs". And then the slabs are stacked together. It seems the main advantage of this method is to make touching up easier. A common artifact in regular stacks are 'halos', where foreground structures are surrounded by a blur since the program can't see background details that are lined up next to foreground structures. This can be especially bad with hairy subjects since there can be lots of foreground hairs. Slabbing helps with this, and it makes touching up easier since one can touch up with maybe 10 slabs rather than 100 original pictures.

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

Nice shots Mark.
The slabbing is interesting, I just had an issue with a stack I did of a weasel (38 shots) that had 'blank' halos around the legs in a couple of spots. I had not seen the effect before but it's nice to know what causes it. I use Helicon and it doesn't have anything like slabbing that I'm aware of.

tinusbum Loc: east texas

i often shoot a stack, say 9 pics.if it doesnt turn out i will stack 3 pics 3 times or half then the other half and then stack the stacks.quite often they turn out.

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

That is then much like slabbing. Although in the ZS program they slightly overlap the stacks too. So maybe stack 3 pics but overlap by one. Then stack those together.

JimmyTB

Very nice images, and good info. I had a funnel spider set up housekeeping in one of my firewood stacks over the summer but whenever I got near with the camera it disappeared back into the funnel. If I'm blessed with a chance next year I am better prepared with a remote trigger. Haven't tried stacking yet, maybe have to give that a try soon.

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

Thank you. I've paid much more attention to them this previous summer. They do disappear, but if you sit they come back out although it may take some time. The one here had a web at the top of a 'expendable' plant in our garden, so I took off the top, spider and all, and set it up indoors. Had all the time in the world to wait for her to come out then. I think she also got used to me since she became very tolerant. I was the "food god", and maybe that helped.

JeffDavidson Loc: Originally Detroit Now Los Angeles

Beautiful. Excellent detail.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Excellent images as well as the informative narrative to go along with them. A tip of the hat to your ability to focus stack live subjects!

I've used the 'make do' slabbing with the older version of Zerene which of course works good however it takes more effort than afforded in the new version which removes the need for multiple sessions and then bringing in those results for the final stack.

naturepics43 Loc: Hocking Co. Ohio - USA

Outstanding results. It does take a lot of time and patience to attempt live stacks. You did a great job. I've been using "Bugslabber" which as Sippyjug pointed out does require extra steps (No pun intended) outside of the Zerene Stacker program. Thanks for the info. I'll have to give it a try.

sscnxy

Hi Mark. I always love your photos because of your compositional skills and superior photog technique. I haven't gotten into focus stacking yet -- that'll come later when I have gotten a lot better at just focusing manually. Your photos are incredibly sharp, as evidenced by the fine pointed hairs and leg spikes. Do you have to post process sharpen, or is this sharpness straight out of camera? And may I ask which particular macro lens did you use for these photos? With your suggestions the past few months, I think I've steadily improved my macro shooting. Thanks much again, Mark.

NMY

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

Thank you. The lens I use for macro is the Canon 100mm f/2.8 L. Very often a Raynox 150 or 250 lens is on the macro lens to increase its power. Once in true macro lens territory, I don't personally think there is much difference in sharpness with macro lenses. For single frame pictures I shoot full manual, 'spray and pray', somewhere around at f/14, ISO 400, 1/160 shutter. Manual dual head flash with big wonky diffusers.
I focus on the closest bit of the bug, letting the aperture bring in more of it, and then hopefully some more pix focusing a little further in. I will sometimes use Gimp to cut and paste parts of 2 or more of these pictures together to get one picture with deeper focus. Sometimes I use the stacking program to do that for me.

For serious 'studio' focus stacked pictures like these, I shoot at a wider aperture (f/7.1, 8, 9, 10) to be closer to the sharper setting of the lens. These were done with one of the smaller apertures b/c they were big spiders. The pictures go straight from Raw --> a large jpeg, and then it is stacked. Touching up to remove what artifacts I can are done in the stacking program, and then on to Gimp for post processing.

Post processing in Gimp generally involves use of the curves tool, highlight and shadow tools, and de-noise filter (with the G'Mic plug in) and finally cropping. Any artifacts or serious problems can be dealt with with the cloning and healing brushes, and other brushes.
Since a stack is already rendered to be about as sharp is its gonna be, I usually don't sharpen stacked pictures since they usually come out looking over-sharpened.
For single frame pictures I do the above, but i also will try to sharpen with un-sharp mask at its default settings. If i like the effect, I keep it. It seems best to use de-noise before sharpening, although I think other people say you should do the opposite. Not sure what is best, really.

Right now I am slowly learning more about post processing from true Raw pictures (with Raw Therapee). I used to never do that. So I am learning too.

sscnxy

Hello Mark. Thank you much for instructing me. For now, since I don't have the tools to focus stack, I'm forced to shoot at F11 or higher just to lock in more DOF and live with some softness in the images. Once I start FS, I'll try shooting at apertures more in line with the lens' sweet spot to maximize sharpness and then let the FS produce the desired DOF. Your level of image clarity is the kind of gold standard any macro shooter should strive for. I certainly do!

NMY