Midge at 20X

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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Charles Krebs
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Midge at 20X

Post by Charles Krebs »

I've posted quite a few midges in the past (love those wrap-around eyes!), but I thought it wouild be worthwhile to try one with Tufuse. The antenna are really tough to stack at high magnifications.

Every time I use that program with a large stack I look at my computer grinding away and think of police chief Brody's (Roy Scheider) line in the movie Jaws.... "You're gonna need a bigger boat". If I get seriously hooked on using this program I'm either going to need a much more powerful computer, or just get used to starting the process before I go bed at night!

Nikon D200. Nikon CF M-Plan 20/0.4 ELWD on bellows at 20X. 119 images stacked with Tufuse.
Image

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Beautiful! :D

And nearly flawless -- as far as I can see from looking at just what's posted here.

I can find a couple of hairs that are broken up by eye facets, but I would never see them if I didn't know what to look for.

What does it look like to you?

--Rik

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

It looked very good straight out of the program. I did do some touch-up on this, but it was much less than required after running the same stack in Helicon. And CombineZ's version would have required considerable work... not really a "competitive" result for this shot. (But is is essential for aligning/sizing the images for use in Tufuse).

I must say that I did like the appearance of the eyes, and the overall tonalities better in Helicon (no contrast build-up or tonality shifts), but there was much more "pixel level" work needed. Outside of the processing time, the contrast build-up in Tufuse seems to be the most significant issue for me. I'll need to try a few things (I suppose mostly in the "prep" of the stack images) to see if I can get a better handle on that.

It is painfully slower than Helicon, but for some types of images the results are very impressive. How does that saying go?... "good things come to those who wait". :wink:

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

Wow that's excellent! I had one of these in front of the camera recently and didn't even notice the eyes wrapped around like this!! (Wrong alignment!). Must get that stereomicroscope for specimen prep...

You are right on Tufuse being a bit slow. I'm now in the habit of doing all the pre-processing of my images after shooting them, then batching up all the 'fusing' and setting it going when I go to bed. Next morning there are 1 to several stacks for me to look at!

What I really need is a way to batch up sets of images for alignment in CZM. I've looked at the help, but there does not seem to be an 'export rectangles' option in the macro editor, so I'm not convinced this is possible as is...

I'm also looking at my computer thinking it needs to be faster! Like the look of these new multi-core cpus...

beetleman
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Post by beetleman »

WOW an excellent photo Charles. My computer is a Intel QuadCore with 4 gigs of memory (Vista 64) and it doesn't seem like Helicon Focus uses the multi cores for processes to speed things up.
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

Doug, isn't it only the very 'top' version of Helicon which uses the multi-processors? I think if you 'just' have the normal 'pro' version then it will only run on one core...

None of the software I currently use is Multi-core friendly, but at least if I had a dual core, I could be processing alignment in CZM on one core and still have a core spare for other tasks like browsing the forum here! At the moment when I'm doing an alignment/stack my computer is pretty much unusable!!

Michigan Michael
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Post by Michigan Michael »

Stunning wizardry!

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Regarding multiple processors, I started a new topic in the Technical Discussions forum.

--Rik

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Laurie
I had one of these in front of the camera recently and didn't even notice the eyes wrapped around like this!! (Wrong alignment!). Must get that stereo microscope for specimen prep...
:wink: I didn't notice it either until a couple years ago when my first completed "stack" of a midge head popped onto the screen. I think this was it... http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... .php?t=358
I didn't even really notice it while I was actually taking the pictures!

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

Holy cow that older shot is stunning! (I thought I'd looked through all the old stuff here but I obviously missed some!!)

Why do you think the feathery antennae are white on the old shot and dark on the new one, is it a slightly different species or a different lighting setup?

ETA Charlie, Have you tried processing your RAW files differently for Tufuse? I had all sorts of problems when I tried stacking files in Tufuse which were processed from RAW for output in CZM. Now I make sure the output from the RAW processing is quite low contrast.. It does mean I can't readily compare the output from the different software but I'm happy for now with the setup I'm using! (CZM Align, Tufuse Stack).

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

Lovely!
The sparkling ommatidia bestow a welcome ornamental touch. A piece of nature´s jewellery!

Betty

Roy Patience
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Post by Roy Patience »

Charles,

What a stunning image! The symmetry and beauty of nature never ceases to amaze me.

I think the sharpness and contrast is what draws me into this image. It really "snaps."

Roy

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