Macroscape

Lord Vetinari

More mouldy melon. Taken at 3:1 and focus stacked.
Brian V

l2oBiN

I like it. Brian, do you use manual flash for the focus stacks? I am not getting good results with the stacks, there are always artifacts. How rapid ie how much displamenent is there between different stack images? Also do you stack Tiffs, jepegs or RAW and at what size?

Lord Vetinari

l2oBiN wrote:

I like it. Brian, do you use manual flash for the focus stacks? I am not getting good results with the stacks, there are always artifacts. How rapid ie how much displamenent is there between different stack images? Also do you stack Tiffs, jepegs or RAW and at what size?

Thanks
I use ETTL flash with the camera in manual. 1/200th, aperture to suit the magnification ISO100/200.
I stack full size jpgs after raw conversion. Fraid I don't know the displacement - I'm hand holding with fixed focus and move the camera - I start at the outside take a pic but note where it's just going oof in the viewfinder and make sure that's in good focus in the next shot. The main thing is to make sure the camera movement is in the same direction towards the back of the subject and not to rotate the camera between shots.

It is fairly common to get stack artifacts - this one had lots of them. Assuming the stack is not too bad, I repair it by using the healing brush in PS to transer image from the slices back onto the stacked pic - takes a while but it is often worth it. If the stack is really bad I will often just hand stack the picture in PS using the same method.

Brian V.

l2oBiN

do you get any exposure problems or are your exposures quite uniform from slice to slice?

Lord Vetinari

l2oBiN wrote:

do you get any exposure problems or are your exposures quite uniform from slice to slice?

Don't normally get exposure problems- sometimes get slightly brighter through the slices but nothing major. I use FEC a lot on the flash and change it depending on the background colour - so when shooting against light/white BGs upto + 1.6 FEC and the reverse for dark or no background (upto -1.6FEC) but I don't change the FEC during a focus stack sequence.

Brian V.

l2oBiN

Thnx Brian.

Lord Vetinari

l2oBiN wrote:

Thnx Brian.

BTW what camera/flash combo are you using ?
Ah just checked - Nikon stuff. - just there have been reports of problems with canon 40D and MT-24 flash giving inconsistent exposures.

tlee

Very cool!

Lord Vetinari

tlee wrote:

Very cool!

Thanks T
Brian V.

timbo13

this is a nice shot, I have to try focus stacking sometime.

Skippy

Lord Vetinari wrote:

More mouldy melon. Taken at 3:1 and focus stacked.
Brian V

Only you can make Mould look pretty .... Skippy
.

l2oBiN

Brian, would you please be able to post the images/slices used to build the final focus stacked image? It would help gauge the kind of distance,rotation,pitch is acceptable. Than you.

Lord Vetinari

Thanks for the comments all
Isobin- will try to put a slice composite together.
[EDIT] ok have done an animated GIF of the 9 shots used- no PS work just straight from RAW conversion. Suspect it will take a while to load. Did have 1 missing slice caused by flash recycle failure.
Brian v.

GOLDENORFE

very good interesting subject, at least it doesnt move!
amazing what it looks like at high mag.
did the textures of mould differ much on the melon?
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Lord Vetinari

GOLDENORFE wrote:

very good interesting subject, at least it doesnt move!
amazing what it looks like at high mag.
did the textures of mould differ much on the melon?
phil
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Thanks Phil -
There seemed to be several different moulds growing on the melon and they are rather different to the normal penicillium type moulds you see on food. You couldn't really discern the main mould in the substrate- just these odd fruiting spore heads.
Brian V.