RedAdmiral Loc: Humboldt County, California

Well, after numerous attempts at positioning, figuring out exposures/lighting, trial and error passes with StackRail, software crashes, and more than a few curse words. I finally realized one of my fantasy photos. A macro panographic shot of a millipede. Including 76 exposures, 1mm movement between each on a StackRail, I attempted to combine the exposures in Helicon Focus, but all its panographic module would do was give me a "Contact sheet" of all the images. I downloaded the newest version still no avail. A friend suggested I use Lightroom which crashed a few times trying to digest the data before succeeding. Then on to Capture One for editing and removing spots from mirror defects and dirt, white balance, etc. Then to Photoshop Elements to downsample the resulting 320 megabyte image to about 2. All in all it took a bit over 10 hours. I think the critter is a Eurasian Millipede, an introduced species doing well in the Pacific Northwest. Comments and/or suggestions are appreciated.

Canon 6D mk II, Canon 65 mm 1 to 5 Macro (about 3.5 X), StackRail, Capture One, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements 13.

.6 seconds, F16, ISO 1600, Light by Cat LED Worklight and florescent ring light.

(Download)


(Download)

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

👍 This is an above and beyond effort!

newtoyou Loc: Eastport

WHEW. A labor of love.
I wish now I still had my labware.
Bill

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

Looks great. So what if it takes a Rube Goldberg contraption to get the job done. Worth it in the end, I think.

RedAdmiral Loc: Humboldt County, California

The old ringstands were bought at a junk shop for $5.00 complete with collars, clamps, and rings. They come in handy once in a while. The front surfaced mirror was salvaged from a 1960's fluoroscopy optical viewing head. The computer used to control the camera and StackRail is an old HP (With a few upgrades and tweaks) running Windows 7. All part of the challenge of realizing the picture I had in my head.