sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

While away on our RV trip for ten days, my better half found this Leaf Footed Bug walking around on the car and she put it in an empty pill bottle for me and setting up my camera rig was the first thing I did when we returned.

For those who may wish to know:

This image was taken with my combination of a 28mm reversed enlarger lens, 2X teleconverter and 36mm extension tube. The subject was illuminated with a combination of LED and fiber optic lights diffused through two translucent plastic drink cups with a white paper towel between them.

Camera was set at f/5.6 @ 1/5-second shutter speed with the ISO set to range between 64 and a max of 200. This is a focus stacked image comprised of 324 images shot in TIFF and merged into this final image using Zerene Stacker.

As always, thanks in advance to all who view and for your comments, suggestions, questions and critique.

(Download)

tinusbum Loc: east texas

excellent stack!!!!!!

Mark Sturtevant Loc: Grand Blanc, MI

A very nice picture!

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

I was homesick and having macro/micro withdrawals and I was very excited when the better-half caught the Leaf Footed Bug for me. She knows that I keep empty plastic pill bottles in the house, car and RV for just such occasions and she parked the car to get it off the windshield. She's a true jewel for helping me feed my passion.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

324 images?? Whoa.

Nicely done as always, and welcome back!

Mike

Pysanka Artist Loc: Rochester, NY

Wow!! Welcome home!

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Mike, I realize that the number of images required due to my setup borders on the insane however I shoot a "flat field of view" in my process. This is much the process of producing an image from a slide or from a 35mm film negative where a flat focus from edge to edge is required.

Because an insect is a three dimensional subject and I want a view of it from front to back the lens has to take numerous steps of just a few microns at a time. Many times I do what is referred to as a "short stack" which is to only produce sharpness in the areas of the most interest and while the remaining portions of the subject are either out of focus or out of view altogether elsewise the number of images would be far more than I would care to process.

I'm shooting in TIFF mode now so there is little to no data loss from file compression. Of course this results in much larger stack file sizes. This one was over 32-gig in size and took 7-minutes to transfer from the camera card to the PC. The final stacked image is also in TIFF format which in this case was in the 2.2-gig size range.

I do not crop my images for I adjust the level of magnification to fill the camera frame however I must resize them down to 2048 x 1637 pixel and save them as a PNG which for me tends to hold up better than a JPEG which by nature gets compressed with some amount of data loss.

EnglishBrenda Loc: Kent, England

Wonderul detail Gary.

docshark Loc: Millersville, PA

Excellent shot as always Gary. Love the downloads.
-Doc

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Brenda, it's been a journey of trial and error as well as an adventure into a new realm for me. I've experimented with several lenses and combination of lenses along with extension tubes, helicoid and even bellows trying to find the combinations that performed best for me.

Illumination is an ongoing learning curve and quite frankly it's a science in itself as it is obedient to the Laws of Physics. I could fill several chapters of a book with what I have experimented with and the successes as well as the duds.

More importantly to me is the joy that I get reading the comments and feedback for it is what inspires me to continue along this path as well as the pleasure I get sharing my results along with the techniques I've used to obtain them.

I truly owe it all to the UHH Community for you all have played such a large part in it all.

Hoping you and all of yours have a blessed day, - Gary

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

Thanks for all of the information.

I am amazed that you can stack that many images so cleanly. You are working at much higher magnification then I ever do and the number of images required goes up exponentially with increases in magnification. I think of 60 images in a stack as a lot.

My method is similar. I start with raw files, tweak those and batch process to TIFF, then import the TIFFs into Zerene, stack as both PMax and DMap, touch up the DMap from the PMax stack and from individual images, export as TIFFs and then resize and convert to JPEG for posting.

Are you still using the PMax method?

Mike

EnglishBrenda Loc: Kent, England

I too hope you are all well and enjoyed your vacation.

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Mike, Yes I am still using PMax exclusively and with my combination of lenses it appears to work okay for me. I have done some in Dmap however I am a long way from mastering it. I have done some editing in Zerene although it is PAINFULLY slow for me for the stack of images are so fine that there is little difference from one to another so to march my way up an antenna to correct it could take gosh knows how long.

Fortunately for me there is very little clean up required except for some dust trails outside the subject which I can clean up in post with spot healing.

I've seen some of your work and it is stunningly beautiful which shows how much time and effort you put into them.