Stacking results with a Sony 4K video camera, 40X, 10X, 4X

[ckatosmith]

I was curious to try and stack on the fly with my Sony HDR AX-100 4K HandyCam since I thought maybe I could take advantage of the 30fps and simply change focus during the shoot.

This 4K camcorder (3840x2160 pixels in 4K video mode) has a 1" CMOS sensor and since it's video, no mirror slap to worry about. It has a Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T lens, which I think is pretty sharp. I filmed at 0 Gain, f/6.2, simply laying the camera over my Nikon Eclipse E200 microscope (binocular eyepiece removed).The lens was zoomed to max, and I used a cabled remote trigger. The objectives are Nikon CFI E Plan Acromats that came with the microscope.

Each movie was about 2 seconds, where I manually turned the fine focus knob, so at 30fps, about 60-80 plus shots from which I extracted the jpegs, stacked in Zerene Stacker (quick PMax) and slight adjustments in Photoshop.

I still want more resolution, but in order to use my Nikon D800E set over the microscope AND use StackShot, I will have to move on to the project of hooking up StackShot to the fine tube knob of the microscope. (yup, I have a page bookmarked on that). But I think this was an interesting and fun experiment. The filter size is 62mm, so I'm already wondering how I might attach a microscope objective to the Sony 4K for 3D subjects??

The slide is of a human hair shaft. Comments welcome.

40X



10X


4X

[rjlittlefield]

I'm already wondering how I might attach a microscope objective to the Sony 4K for 3D subjects??

The first test is to check for vignetting. Simply make a 10 mm diameter hole in a piece of black paper and hold that paper about 10 mm in front of the camcorder's lens so that the lens looks out through the hole. If the image does not vignette too badly under those circumstances, then there is a reasonable chance that you can also look through an objective. If that does not work, then you would need much more elaborate optics to relay the image through the camcorder lens, maybe too elaborate to be practical.

Here is the 4X. Not sure why I couldn't upload it with the first two.

Actually you did the upload OK, but in writing the first post you jammed two img tags right together, as [/img][img] . The lack of whitespace between the two tags caused the corresponding two images to butt up against each other with no space, both on the same line. This caused the whole page to be too wide for a browser, which messed up the text and probably caused the last image to be off-screen to the right where you couldn't see it except by scrolling. While you were uploading the last image again, I edited your first post to fix the problem. Cheers!

--Rik

[ckatosmith]

Thanks for the explanations and tip. Yes, I saw the image information and the fat page and didn't realize I was the cause... sorry about that.

edited to add: the Sony 4K does 20MP files in still images, so I'll check out the objective route with hope...

edited to add: I just tried out a Nikon 4X E Plan Acromat on the Sony 4K camera and it does work with the lens zoomed out maximally. I could focus on a microscope slide (quickly done hand held trial) and the vignetting was about like the 10X photo in my original top post.