First run with Nikon CFI 10X

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 3:00 am

At last, after several lost bids I won a Nikon CFI60 Plan 10X, know by many forum members. They are very populair and don't come cheap nowadays

Had to wait another couple of weeks for the jinfinance adapters to arrive and yesterday all the pieces were finally complete.
Found a fresh wasp (at least that's what I think it is - ID still unknown) and did my first stack run.

Here's the wasp, taken with an El-Nikkor 50mm/F2.8, to illustrate.

And here's a headshot, with the Nikon CFI60 Plan 10X:

Quite pleased with this first attempt, if only to show where improvements can be made ( brushing up, background, what f-stop to use on the tubelens etc.)
The CFI60 has a very comfortable working distance.
Used a Tamron 28-200mm as a tube lens, 3 steprings to go from 52 to 62mm, lighted with 3 Jansjo's and a soupcup diffuser.
200 images, Canon 550D, mounted on a vertical stand. 2-5 µm increments on the focusblock.
I tried 2 other tele's but they all showed horrible vingetting, which might be caused by the number of steprings used.
It's all a bit wobbly on the dining table, I will move the 'macroscope' to a more solid place like the brick mantlepiece in my room.
That should reduce vibration.

Again for this attempt: all critisism, advise, input and opinions are very welcome!

Edit: typo's

BugEZ · Post by **BugEZ** » Wed May 25, 2011 3:19 am

Excellent first stack with your new lens. I especially like the reflected image of the microscope lens in the top-forward ocelli. Very crisp. The "wobble" of the dining room table does not appear to have prevented a good result.

Keith

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 3:23 am

Thanks Keith, I didn't notice it, the reflection in the ocelli almost looks (with a bit of fantasy) like an iris and pupil, weird.

Edit: again: typo's. Must polish up my English

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Wed May 25, 2011 8:40 am

Fred, this looks great. Welcome to the world of microscope objectives!

I don't see any technical flaws here.

Regarding "what f-stop to use on the tubelens", that should be wide open. Simply putting the objective on the front stops down the system to about f/20 (=magnification/(2*NA)) courtesy the aperture of the objective. If you stop down the tube lens also, then the two apertures fight with each other and you get vignetting.

What were the two tele's that vignetted, and what aperture did you have them set on?

--Rik

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 10:54 am

Thanks Rik, your answer is very rewarding for me.

What were the two tele's that vignetted, and what aperture did you have them set on?

Tested the following objectives:
Tamron AF 70-300mm 1:4-5.6 LD TELE-MACRO (1:2)
Tamron 28-200mm 1:3.8-5.6 MACRO AF Aspherical XR (IF) is the one I used on the wasp.
Beroflex Auto Zoom 1:4.5 85-210mm

All were full open, the Tamrons needed lots of step rings to get things fitted.
The 28-200 gave me full view and hardly any vignetting. The Beroflex was my first choice, as a telezoom it is a nice piece of glass.

As you might have noticed there is some purple fringing around the wasps hairs, where in the rest of the shot there is hardly any.
Can this be an effect caused by the hairs? I allways try to take care of shading and diffusing so no specular reflection would appear.

I feel I now own a nice stock of lenses to shoot various objects with.
A prime 200mm with a small filtersize (preferably with 52mm so I can fit the jinfinance adapter right in) would probably perform better .
I underestimated the effects 3 rings had on the result. Or should I pick one of the surplus shed lenses morfa used (no longer available)

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Wed May 25, 2011 11:36 am

canonian wrote:As you might have noticed there is some purple fringing around the wasps hairs, where in the rest of the shot there is hardly any.
Can this be an effect caused by the hairs?

There is often purple fringing on hairs. We're not sure where it comes from. One possibility is that it originates as longitudinal chromatic aberration in the optics and then gets accentuated during the stacking.

This stack might be able to provide some useful information. If you pull the images into Zerene, it's easy to use press-and-drag in the list of input files to play through them like a filmstrip. Find the frame where a purple-fringed hair is in sharp focus, then look at nearby frames on both sides of focus to see how the fringe changes. If it goes from purple to none to green, that's longitudinal CA. I would be interested to see some crops showing this effect, if it's not too much trouble to make them.

--Rik

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Wed May 25, 2011 12:11 pm

Fred - if you're using three or so step rings, you'll often find you can reverse one, to reduce the "length" of the combination. It depends how the threads are cut, but it's worth a look.
I doubt it'll make a lot of difference though, the normal finding is that zoom lenses vignette at almost any setting other than maximum focal length. Is that what you get too?
The quality of the "tube" lens used by itself seems to be relatively unimportant (the Morfanon is pretty poor). The joy of that is that a humble (cheap!) old prime of say 135mm can be very useful, to for example turn a 10x into a 6.75x.

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 12:33 pm

ChrisR wrote:

you'll often find you can reverse one, to reduce the "length" of the combination.

No can do , Chris.
I bought these and can't be reversed.

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Wed May 25, 2011 12:59 pm

That's odd, I can usually do this sort of thing - one side of rings shown:

:

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 1:03 pm

I don't get it Chris,
That would not change the distance between the frontlens of the tele and the shoulder of the microscope objective.
Or am I missing something?:?

Edit1: Oops, you're right Chris, it does change the distance

Edit2 : Nope, doesn't work, not with these ones...

The shape of the rings won't let me perform your (rather nifty) trick.

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 1:33 pm

Rik wrote:

I would be interested to see some crops showing this effect, if it's not too much trouble to make them.

Hmmm, homework assignment. Nice!

This video shows you're absolutely right, Rik.
I selected the files where the hairs get in and out of focus , dragged them thru iMovie, cropped it and uploaded the video.
You definitely see a purple to green transition.
Show it full screen and in HD to see it clearly.
This has been very educational for me!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Wed May 25, 2011 2:45 pm

Great video -- thanks!

So, as a post-production thing, now that you know those hairs are really colorless and the purple comes from CA, you can desaturate that area if you want to.

--Rik

canonian · Post by **canonian** » Wed May 25, 2011 11:08 pm

I love the versatility of this hobby. Not a day goes by without learning new techniques.

To reach a better end result I have to develop my postproduction skills.
There are a lot of parameters involved I leave unstirred, now I only do a bit of enhancing contrast and some overall sharpening.
Next time I wiil try to optimize the separate shots before stacking them.
Camera Raw seems a great tool for the job to batchprocess all the images.

Wim van Egmond · Post by **Wim van Egmond** » Thu May 26, 2011 8:57 am

Great Results, Fred! I wonder if it will make much difference if you optimize the shots before processing. And than you have twice the amount of files. And do you store them in jpeg or tiff?

Wim

Joaquim F. · Post by **Joaquim F.** » Thu May 26, 2011 2:05 pm

Is a excellent first result, maybe a darker background and a more neutral slices can improve the contrast and the visibility of purple-green fringes normally is minor in Pmax.

greetings

First run with Nikon CFI 10X

First run with Nikon CFI 10X

Very Nice!