Greetings from yet another newbie!

[Nissan_Ranger]

Greetings, folks,

My ongoing interest in Macrophotography has brought me here and I'm
seeing some great images, ingenious equipment, and techniques.
In September this year, it will be 50 years to the month that I first
learned to develop film and print the results. I worked through an
old agfa 120 roll film camera, a Speed Graphic, Arca Swiss 4 by 5,
then Minolta SRT, and now -finally- a well used Nikon D-700.

I always had an affinity for close-up and macro work. I only
recently heard about this thing called 'image stacking' and wishing
to learn more about it brought me here. About three weeks ago
after considerable research, I bought a Cognisys extended rail. My
first results were less than salutary, but I do have a tendency to
want to release shutters and stuff before taking time learning about
new things...

The very first image stacking result was... horrendous! The picture
itself is awful with an ugly old watch that was running during the
shoot but all I wanted was to see stacking and I wanted to see it
now; just like a kid at Christmas! Done with Nikon D-700, 55mm
Micro-Nikkor with PK-13 extension, and slaved flash; 30 images
stacked with Picolay.



Changed parameters in Picolay and got some improvement in
the stacking. I also used only every other image... Still pretty bad picture. :-)



Fast forward to this past weekend. I spent a day in the greenhouse
and shot some pictures. Last one was a painfully pretty picture of
this thorny weed flower. Same equipment as above, but ringflash
instead of remote slave. 15 images stacked with Picolay
and re-touched in GIMP. My seventh or eighth stacked image.
Definitely some improvement!

l

Picolay seems to be working okay which is good because buying
the Cognisys rail pretty much broke the piggy bank on my small
military pension. Anyway, I see a few things here I am going to
work on. I'm looking forward to gearing up for some 10X work
and microscopy as well. All my lenses are 'old' lenses bought very
cheaply on ebay. I took my information on them from a list called
'Nikon Cheapskate FX Lenses' written up by Ken Rockwell. They
are wonderful kit and feel like the solid stuff I used to work with in
my Minolta days and not the cruddy plastic stuff that seems to
predominate lens manufacturing these days..
Thank you for looking this over and I hope everybody has a
great day!

Andreas Engel

[Deanimator]

Could you describe what Picolay settings you use?

I've tried to use it a couple of times and my results always resembled your first attempts.

I gave up and went back to CombineZP.

[Nissan_Ranger]

I did the following procedure stacking with Picolay:

1. Started program.
2. Loaded images. (Clicked 'File', then 'Add image(s)'.)
3. Hit F7. (That function does auto-align position and resize to the images)
---Waited for work to be done---
4. In bottom left image window, clicked 'Enhance'.
---Image enhancement window opened---
5. Checked 'Light contr.' Set to 40.
6. Click 'Dark contr.' Set to 70.
(Note: Click 'Test' to see what the changes do; takes about 5 seconds
to show. You may experiment with other enhancement settings always
using 'test' to see what it does without actually writing to the images.
When you are satisfied, proceed to step 7.)
7. Checked 'Apply to all marked images'.
8. Clicked 'Apply' button.
---Waited for work to be done.---
9. Opened 'Stack operations menu'.
10. Clicked on 'Set stack Parameters'
11. Clicked Prefer 'low frames' and set slider
to 45
12. checked 'Align images'
13. Un-checked 'Test 4 parameter sets'.
(Note: I unchecked this because I knew where I was going with this
image set. Leaving it set will do 4 stacking results and take about 4
times as long; idea being that you pick the best result and try that
method with further adjustments.)
14. Checked '2X'
15. >>>> GO! <<<<
Waited for work to be done.

Resulting images will appear in the folder you picked the original pictures from. It will be named something like:
P#sharp_sup1_low_45_al2.jpg
You may now take that into your photo processing program for final prep...

Hope this helps.

Andreas Engel

[ChrisR]

Welcome Andreas. I'm sure amny of us coveted the SRT-101 when it came out .

The 55mm Micro Nikkor is a very good lens (either, but f/2.8 particularly) and you've made strides altready so I'm sure you're on your way.
About 4x is a good worthwhile step to try on the way to 10x, I would suggest, which can be simple(r) and cheap(er). Great , for instance, for the sexy bits of that nettle flower!

Check what's in the FAQ section, there's a lot, and ask away.

[Deanimator]

I did the following procedure stacking with Picolay:

1. Started program.
2. Loaded images. (Clicked 'File', then 'Add image(s)'.)
3. Hit F7. (That function does auto-align position and resize to the images)
---Waited for work to be done---
4. In bottom left image window, clicked 'Enhance'.
---Image enhancement window opened---
5. Checked 'Light contr.' Set to 40.
6. Click 'Dark contr.' Set to 70.
(Note: Click 'Test' to see what the changes do; takes about 5 seconds
to show. You may experiment with other enhancement settings always
using 'test' to see what it does without actually writing to the images.
When you are satisfied, proceed to step 7.)
7. Checked 'Apply to all marked images'.
8. Clicked 'Apply' button.
---Waited for work to be done.---
9. Opened 'Stack operations menu'.
10. Clicked on 'Set stack Parameters'
11. Clicked Prefer 'low frames' and set slider
to 45
12. checked 'Align images'
13. Un-checked 'Test 4 parameter sets.
(Note: I unchecked this because I knew where I was going with this
image set. Leaving it set will do 4 stacking results and take about 4
times as long; idea being that you pick the best result and try that
method with further adjustments.)
14. Checked '2X'
15. >>>> GO! <<<<
Waited for work to be done.

Resulting images will appear in the folder you picked the original pictures from. It will be named something like:
P#sharp_sup1_low_45_al2.jpg
You may now take that into your photo processing program for final prep...

Hope this helps.

Andreas Engel

That was extremely helpful. I'll give that procedure a try.

Thanks.

[Nissan_Ranger]

Please let me know how it works for you, Deanimator...