Focused Stacked Image of Lilly Pollen
May 30, 2023 07:31:03 #
sippyjug104 wrote:
This is a focused stacked image of the pollen on a... (show quote)
Well done as usual Sippy and I liked seeing your set-up
May 30, 2023 09:26:20 #
May 30, 2023 09:27:47 #
raymondh wrote:
As incredible are the images you produce, the setup boggles the mind!!
Thanks, Raymondh. I appreciate your viewing.
May 30, 2023 09:28:19 #
junglejim1949 wrote:
Well done as usual Sippy and I liked seeing your set-up
Thanks for the feedback, Jim.
May 30, 2023 11:00:56 #
Great macro, Sippy, that is one hell of a setup that you have there, good job.
May 30, 2023 11:16:46 #
Fantastic images and your setup is awesome. My wife has a Babylock Solaris 3 sewing machine. She makes quilt jackets that are works of art. She has about 110 jackets so far with more to come. In between jackets she also makes quilts, table runners, etc. The machine is four years old and has over 40 million stitches on it. Most people that sew only have around two or three million stitches in four years. It's finally starting to wear out. She wants a new one now. They only cost about 18,000! Thats more than I paid for our first house! But she will cry until she gets the machine. When do you think your camera will wear out?
May 30, 2023 11:21:24 #
Earnest Botello wrote:
Great macro, Sippy, that is one hell of a setup that you have there, good job.
Thanks, Earnest. My macro rig is quite inexpensive compared to buying a single specialty lens like that used for birding or a macro lens.
The bellows that came with a lens were $60. The digital motorized focus rail was $300, and the mounting base was $160. The milling table was $39 and the laboratory scissor jack was $14. My most often used optic is a 50mm f/2.8 enlarger lens that was $57.
May 30, 2023 11:29:58 #
CWS wrote:
Fantastic images and your setup is awesome. My wif... (show quote)
CWS, we have something in common. My cousin bought an embroidery machine and she paid over $20,000 for it so I can relate to your Better Half's passion.
I started out with a Nikon D810 and I racked up over 250,000 clicks on it doing focus stacking. It's not difficult when the average session is 500 or so images and at times, I do three or more a day. I replaced it with a little Fujifilm X-T20 mirrorless camera that is also pushing 200,000 clicks now. It may fail someday and when it does IL replace it with another little mirrorless camera with no need to spend big money for the latest and greatest.
May 30, 2023 11:36:20 #
Great image! Maybe for Christmas, Santa will bring you an electron microscope so you can get really close to your subjects. 
May 30, 2023 11:37:58 #
Thank you, fantastic set up. Can you give details about the two(?) rails? TIA
May 30, 2023 11:53:41 #
notBert wrote:
Thank you, fantastic set up. Can you give details about the two(?) rails? TIA
NotBert, Thanks for viewing and for asking I enjoy sharing what I do and how I do it.
The manual worm-screw rail is not necessary for the process, yet it is convenient. It allows me to move the camera forward and back to achieve a "rough" adjustment of getting the specimen in focus. It's much faster than advancing the camera via the motorized rail.
The bellows also move forward and back which I use for a "finer" adjustment of focus. Because the DOF is ever so shallow (3.5 microns when using this optic which is 0.0035 millimeters) all I often see in focus is a tip of a hair where all else is a blur. When I get the closest point of the specimen in focus, I nudge the motorized rail to get to the point where I want the series of images in the stack to start. I advance the motorized rail to the furthest point, return it back to the starting point and then calibrate the rail and start taking the images step by step until the stack of images has been completed.
May 30, 2023 11:55:09 #
Blues Dude wrote:
Great image! Maybe for Christmas, Santa will bring you an electron microscope so you can get really close to your subjects.
Oh, Blues Dude..!!! That would be a very Merry Christmas although it gets pretty cold here sleeping in the dog house which is were I would be staying.
May 30, 2023 17:19:48 #
Most of your shots and stacks are almost unbelievable with their powerful detail, really good.
Thanks for the explanation. Saw 4 rails and the bellows stretcher and wondered about the redundancy.
Thanks for the explanation. Saw 4 rails and the bellows stretcher and wondered about the redundancy.
May 30, 2023 17:43:07 #
dwmoar
Loc: Oregon, Willamette Valley
sippyjug104 wrote:
Oh, Blues Dude..!!! That would be a very Merry Christmas although it gets pretty cold here sleeping in the dog house which is were I would be staying.
just a teaser
This is what fine table salt looks like magnified 150 times with an electron microscope.
Credit: Todd Simpson/UWO Nanofab
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Fine Table Salt
May 30, 2023 17:52:15 #
Wasabi wrote:
Most of your shots and stacks are almost unbelievable with their powerful detail, really good.
Thanks for the explanation. Saw 4 rails and the bellows stretcher and wondered about the redundancy.
Thanks for the explanation. Saw 4 rails and the bellows stretcher and wondered about the redundancy.
Thanks, Wasabi. The milling table provides a means to move the specimen in an X&Y axis. The laboratory scissor jack allows me to stage the specimen in a Z axis so together I can move forward and back, left and right, and up and down. I mount the specimen on a steel ball which allows me to rotate with pitch and yaw.
The worm-screw manual rail provides manual movement of the camera forward and backward in a coarser increment. The bellows also have a forward and backward manual movement that is a finer adjustment. The digital motorized focus rail moves in extremely fine increments (as fine as one micron per step) so although far more precise to dial in focus, it takes time to move any distance more than a millimeter or so which is why I position and move the gear manually as much as possible before fine-tuning.
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