Very tiny wildflower

Forehead

This little gem would have been an ideal candidate to try out some focus-stacking software on. But the winds were contrary, and I had to settle for this:

Lord Vetinari

Fraid I think the noise spoils this shot- is it a crop or is that jpg artifacts from size reduction?
Brian V.

Forehead

No crop here. The original 4MP (JPEG Fine) picture is just as noisy as this size-reduced one.

I used a Canon Powershot A320 with a 25mm eyepiece from a Meade Telescope--held upside down--to get that last shot. The light level was getting a bit low and, as I was maybe 1/4 inch from the subject, that also blocked much of the available light. So I had to use the ISO 400 setting to be able to use even 1/60-sec (I was fighting contrary winds, you may recall).

My Nikon E5400 is "sick", which required the use of that Canon. But I have noticed an annoying characteristic: macros taken with the Canon (even without trick lenses) tend to be noisier than the Nikon at similar settings.

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Fraid I think the noise spoils this shot- is it a crop or is that jpg artifacts from size reduction?
Brian V.

Awais Yaqub

Yeah i agree but i also heard you : nice shot

Skippy

Forehead wrote:

This little gem would have been an ideal candidate to try out some focus-stacking software on. But the winds were contrary, and I had to settle for this:

Hi there Steve...... yeah too bad about the noise, and wind just doesn't do a thing for anyone wanting to shoot Macro either.

Try it again on a good day ... check your settings, I sometimes forget I've changed the ISO or the speed when I'm out shooting Macro.

...... just remember it's all about having fun and the bonus is learning along the way ........ Skippy (Australia)

Forehead

Tried more macros last night (with that tiny little Cannon A520 and that Meade 25mm eyepiece I mentioned earlier). Some bugs were being attracted to my porch light so I tried ISO 50, shutter speed 1/320-sec, camera speedlight with improvised bounce and diffusion. Some subjects were surprisingly steady, but this huntsman spider wouldn't sit still for very long with a lens no more than 1/4-inch from its face:

Skippy wrote:

Hi there Steve...... yeah too bad about the noise, and wind just doesn't do a thing for anyone wanting to shoot Macro either.

Try it again on a good day ... check your settings, I sometimes forget I've changed the ISO or the speed when I'm out shooting Macro.

...... just remember it's all about having fun and the bonus is learning along the way ........ Skippy (Australia)

Forehead

Here's another result of my pathetic effort to get a face shot of that huntsman. Got a pedipalp, anyway (that counts for SOMETHING, doesn't it?):

Skippy wrote:

Hi there Steve...... yeah too bad about the noise, and wind just doesn't do a thing for anyone wanting to shoot Macro either.

Try it again on a good day ... check your settings, I sometimes forget I've changed the ISO or the speed when I'm out shooting Macro.

...... just remember it's all about having fun and the bonus is learning along the way ........ Skippy (Australia)

Skippy

Forehead wrote:

Here's another result of my pathetic effort to get a face shot of that huntsman. Got a pedipalp, anyway (that counts for SOMETHING, doesn't it?):

You like experimenting right Steve ??
Well....... I recall a guy who used a Magnifying glass to shoot bugs with.
He used it with his digital camera and shot through the magnifying glass.

Give that a try and see what you come up with......I believe you may be very pleasantly surprised....... Magnifying glasses don't cost much at all, and they are a decent size to accomodate your camera's lens.

....... Skippy (Australia)

Forehead

For earlier tries with a magnifying glass, I had used a 10X loupe. Too much distortion, though, away from the center any.

What I found nice about that 25mm Meade telescope eyepiece, is that, with a couple pieces of paper towel to shim with, I can attach that to the lens barrel of the Canon Powershot A520 that I now have to use, seeing how my Nikon E5400 is of vanishingly small utility anymore with that bad image sensor (boo hoo).

But this way, I can use both hands to steady the camera (as much as is possible with coffee nerves) rather than trying to steady two different objects while trying to get a shot of something that's being jostled about by breezes.

I tell you what, though, Skippy, I would love to get my hands on even an old ISI Super MINI SEM and experiment with WETSEM technology.

That's right: WET! Even LIVING samples. In a SEM! Using a special chamber that has a membrane transparent to electrons, it fits in most standard scanning electron microscopes (SEM). No need to sputter-coat the sample as the water and chamber naturally carry away the charge that would otherwise build up and make the image go rapidly fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier...

...and that membrane keeps the water from boiling off in that otherwise 10E-6 Torr vacuum.

Check it out:

www.emsdiasum.com/microscopy/products/sem/wet/gallery.aspx?mm=11

This could be pretty KEWWWWWLLLL!

And finally, I notice you and some other people have their own SMILIES now.

How come I don't get a smilie? :heh

Skippy wrote:

You like experimenting right Steve ??
Well....... I recall a guy who used a Magnifying glass to shoot bugs with.
He used it with his digital camera and shot through the magnifying glass.

Give that a try and see what you come up with......I believe you may be very pleasantly surprised....... Magnifying glasses don't cost much at all, and they are a decent size to accomodate your camera's lens.

....... Skippy (Australia)

Skippy

Forehead wrote:

For earlier tries with a magnifying glass, I had used a 10X loupe. Too much distortion, though, away from the center any.

What I found nice about that 25mm Meade telescope eyepiece, is that, with a couple pieces of paper towel to shim with, I can attach that to the lens barrel of the Canon Powershot A520 that I now have to use, seeing how my Nikon E5400 is of vanishingly small utility anymore with that bad image sensor (boo hoo).

But this way, I can use both hands to steady the camera (as much as is possible with coffee nerves) rather than trying to steady two different objects while trying to get a shot of something that's being jostled about by breezes.

I tell you what, though, Skippy, I would love to get my hands on even an old ISI Super MINI SEM and experiment with WETSEM technology.

That's right: WET! Even LIVING samples. In a SEM! Using a special chamber that has a membrane transparent to electrons, it fits in most standard scanning electron microscopes (SEM). No need to sputter-coat the sample as the water and chamber naturally carry away the charge that would otherwise build up and make the image go rapidly fuzzier and fuzzier and fuzzier...

...and that membrane keeps the water from boiling off in that otherwise 10E-6 Torr vacuum.

Check it out:

www.emsdiasum.com/microscopy/products/sem/wet/gallery.aspx?mm=11

This could be pretty KEWWWWWLLLL!

And finally, I notice you and some other people have their own SMILIES now.

How come I don't get a smilie? :heh

Hi Steve......thanks for the link, I book marked it to check it out later.
Dont worry about the Smiley's I dont have one named after me either

Macro is just so challenging, and can be very disappoint too, cause often what you see in the back of the camera in a review might look great till you look at it on the big screen .... but I enjoy trying, as do most folks.

Keep posting Steve............ Skippy (Australia)

Forehead

No smiley named after you?

'splain THIS, then: :skippy

Skippy wrote:

Hi Steve......thanks for the link, I book marked it to check it out later.
Dont worry about the Smiley's I dont have one named after me either

Macro is just so challenging, and can be very disappoint too, cause often what you see in the back of the camera in a review might look great till you look at it on the big screen .... but I enjoy trying, as do most folks.

Keep posting Steve............ Skippy (Australia)

Forehead

Hey SKIPPY!

For my stacking quals of CombineZM, I finally dared to use the 9mm eyepiece off of that one telescope of mine. I had earlier thought that I would vignette the living daylights out of the images but, lo and behold, I can still fill the frame if zommed all the way out!

I found a somewhat dead Huntsman spider, and shot the inner side of a pedipalp. What I found was rather startling: a helical structure of some sort. However, my crude excuse of a macro rail lacks the fine focussing precision I need with such shallow DOFs. Anyway, here's that pedipalp (six-frame stack), shot using a Canon Powershot A520 and a 9mm Meade (telescope) eyepiece and:

• aperture fixed at f/8
• ISO 50
• Zoom all the way out
• Manual focus (camera) all the way in
• 50W halogen light source

Forehead wrote:

Here's another result of my pathetic effort to get a face shot of that huntsman. Got a pedipalp, anyway (that counts for SOMETHING, doesn't it?):