Ant eye

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:01 pm

It's definitely not quite up the standards of Charles' similar shots but it's the best I've managed so far of an Ant's eye. Not a large ant, around 3mm long. Shot with Nikon 40x/0.5 210/0 ELWD CF objective at as close to optimal (210mm) extension as I can measure!

60 images with previously mentioned objective. Twin flash, ping-pong diffuser. Stacked with Zerene pmax.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 1:40 pm

I'll grant it's not up to where Charlie has pushed the bar, but it's still pretty dang good!

So we're looking at a small part of the head of an ant, whose whole body is only around 3 mm long. I'd have to think about what that means in terms of frame size. But perhaps there's an easier way...

How much of the whole picture is this? And on which camera?

--Rik

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 2:03 pm

Thanks Rik!

Its an Olympus E330, and this is almost full frame, maybe 5% cropped off for rotated streaky borders...

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 2:16 pm

18 mm wide at the sensor, 40X optical magnification, 18/40=0.45 mm across the field at the subject. These little critters sure do pack a lot of detail into a small space, don't they?

Now of course the question is: how much more detail or higher quality did you get using the 40X 0.50, than you would have gotten with a 20X 0.40 and cropping?

--Rik

PS. If your setup prevents physical rotation, then turn off rotation in the alignment options of the stacking software. Whatever adjustments it makes will be wrong anyway.

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 4:24 pm

Good question - If I have time in the next couple of days I will try to reshoot with my 20x/0.4 LWD and find out!

Incidentally your comment regarding rotation led me to run a quick test - I stacked the same frames with scale/rotation/shift x/y all turned off and it turns out my rig is well enough aligned at this magnification, even though at the moment my microscope base is just sitting on the base of my multiphot stand...

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Apr 18, 2010 4:42 pm

Very good. If you don't need 'em, turn 'em off. The shifts are pretty safe, but scale adjustment is another one that is much more likely to be harmful than helpful at this magnification.

--Rik

morfa · Post by **morfa** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 2:11 pm

Hi Laurie, I find myself coming back to this one. I like it – the lighting in particular is quite nice and also a little puzzling. The left side of the eye looks "normal" but what is going on with the highlights on the right hand? I assume the lighting from the right is coming from a less diffused light source? In some parts it almost looks as if light is coming from within the eye – perhaps the micro lenses of the eye is "acting up" and causing this? Anyway I find it quite intriguing to look at.

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 3:55 pm

John,

I'm not sure why the light ended up so different left to right - I use a twinflash and it was set with a 1:1 ratio between the lights, and they were diffused through a section cut out from a ping-pong ball, so the light should be even. I suspect one light is slightly closer, or the angle the flash is above the subject may be slightly higher on that side or something. It certainly wasn't obvious while shooting.

Another possibility just occurred to me, if the ping pong ball was not centred around the subject then the light could have ended up uneven.

Glad you like it anyway!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Wed Apr 21, 2010 5:22 pm

I wonder, on the right side, if perhaps the edge of the pingpong ball was raised enough that the subject could see the flash directly?

--Rik