Iridescent Urania riphaeus wing scales

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

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Charles Krebs
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Iridescent Urania riphaeus wing scales

Post by Charles Krebs »

Wing sections from a Sunset Moth, one of my favorites. The top two images were taken at 20X, the lower at 40X.

I was still curious about the Canon 40D, and the "electronic" first shutter curtain that is used when "silent mode" is set during "live view". It just seemed like great solution for the vibration issues inherent in this type of shot. The 40D instruction book says it should be turned "off" when using extension tubes or electronic flash. In Canon's "40D White Paper" they say that it should not be used with extension tubes or else the exposures may be uneven at shutter speeds of 1/2000 or higher. :smt017
So I rented one for a day.

In short... absolutely no problems with that mode on a bellows. (I don't know about 1/2000 second and I don't care... I'll never get remotely near that on a bellows). As expected, it was extremely effective in avoiding vibration problems. I tried it primarily with shutter speeds in the range of 1/2 to 1/60 second. Fantastic! There is a mechanical second shutter curtain that completes the exposure. I still don't know the travel time for that component, but I suspect that it will not contribute any visible vibration with shutter speeds of 1/60 and slower. SLR's are typically most vibration prone at just these shutter speeds... 1/4 to 1/60th second, so this is really an asset for high magnification photography. (At higher shutter speeds the second shutter curtain might cause some vibration, but I don't know at what point this may (or may not) be something to consider, and unfortunately won't have time to check it out before I take it back.)


Canon 40D. Nikon 20/0.40 CF M Plan ELWD on bellows. 19 image stack.
Image


Canon 40D. Nikon 20/0.40 CF M Plan ELWD on bellows. 23 image stack.

Image

Canon 40D. Nikon CF 40/0.40 M Plan SLWD on bellows. 27 image stack.
Image

acerola
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Post by acerola »

Good news. I did not consider lighting other than flash so far. I must think about it now.
Wonderful pictures, as usual.
What makes the third pictures so different? I know it must be the lighting, but what exactly?
Péter

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Péter,

The lighting is about the same. When you "wander around" the wings at these magnifications you find all sorts of scales and colors. The top two pictures are characteristic of the "bulk" of the highly iridescent scales. The last picture was from a small group of scales that I found only in a couple of very small patches. They have a slightly different shape, are more translucent, and "show" their iridescence in a different manner. Other than the visual differences I don't know.

It really is nice to have the option of using illumination other than flash at some realistic shutter speeds and feel confident that the result is not compromised because of camera vibration. As it is now for me, with certain set-ups, I am not comfortable unless the shutter speeds used with continuous light are quite long (2 seconds or more).

lauriek
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Post by lauriek »

Amazing shots (as usual) Charlie! (Come on reassure me now, you /do/ occasionally get less than fantastic results which you don't post, don't you?) :)

Hmmm 40x SLWD, how does 'Super' translate into mm? I bet it's not that many! :)

Interesting info on the camera. I think most people thought live view was a gimmick on DSLRs when Olympus first introduced it a couple of years ago, but you've showed here it definitely can have some benefits. Did you also use the live view instead of the viewfinder for subject positioning etc? (That's what I do with my E330 as it has a tiltable LCD so its quite easy to work over the whole setup and see exactly what's going on in front of the lens!)

augusthouse
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Post by augusthouse »

Charlie,
This is exciting news. I can see the possibilities.

Laurie,
The SLWD was discussed in detail here (I was curious too).

http://photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4960

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Laurie...
you /do/ occasionally get less than fantastic results which you don't post, don't you?
:smt044 that is the easiest question to answer that I've ever gotten here...:smt044 :wink:

In the link Craig gave you can see that the WD for the SLWD 40X is 14.9mm.

I never really thought of live view as a gimmick, but is was not very compelling for me. That was because in the implementations I'd seen seen up to this, there were actually more mechanical operations occurring at the moment of exposure than if you simply used the "mirror up" function in a non-"live view" body. It was neat to see, but I wasn't crazy about additional mechanical shutter closings and openings with the accompanying vibration. But this partial electronic shutter does make a significant difference for me.

From my brief usage I think I still prefer to set things up with the regular optical viewfinder. But once I was about ready to go, it was very nice to switch to live-view and look at the overall image, and then make final compositional "tweaks". It seemed to me like I got a much better overall feel for the composition when I looked at it (both eyes open) displayed on the back. This was with my tabletop "macro setup" where it is easy for me to look through the viewfinder. I imagine it will seem even sweeter on a microscope's trinocular tube (image fed to a small monitor) where it is more awkward to view through the camera to adjust the composition.

Craig,
Unfortunately ( $:wink:$), once you try it, it's hard not to think about every time you would like to take a picture without flash. Oh well, Canon USA does have a $200 rebate on that body here for a while.

hmmm... :-k is it time to check the credit card balances yet?

beetleman
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Post by beetleman »

Excellent photos Charles. The colors are sooooo beautiful.
Take Nothing but Pictures--Leave Nothing but Footprints.
Doug Breda

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