Honeysuckle buds and guests

[rjlittlefield]

Kind of a riotous little collection of critters in this 6.5 mm field width!

I suspect the gardeners in my family will not allow this situation to continue much longer. But since this is what we have right now, I thought I'd share it with my friends here at photomacrography.net.

This is a 20-frame stack of live bugs, and yep, they were moving around a fair amount.

Click HERE to see the stack converted to a QuickTime movie loop (1.3 MB). The still image shown above is rotated 180 degrees from the original stack orientation shown in the movie.

Due to the movement, there were quite a few ghosts and echos in the stacked result produced just by the software. Fortunately the ZS retouching facility makes it fast and easy to find the right bits to brush in to fix those.

Hope you enjoy -- I had fun making it!

--Rik

Technical: Canon 300D camera with Olympus 38 mm f/2.8 bellows macro lens at f/11, about 2X onto the sensor (effective f/33). Dual fiber halogen illuminator, no added diffusion. 20 frames at 0.010" focus step. Zerene Stacker DMap with retouching from source frames.

[ChrisR]

I just get a white screen from the link, Rik. (8MB broadband)

[rjlittlefield]

Do you have QuickTime installed? I didn't take time to make a cover page that tries to be plugin-friendly, so if you don't have QuickTime, the browser probably just throws up its hands.

--Rik

[rjlittlefield]

HERE is a cover page that may be more plugin-friendly. I can't tell for sure, though, since all of my machines already have QuickTime installed.

--Rik

[ChrisR]

Yes that runs. Quicktime is on the PC, "repaired" and configured to run .mov files, but I still get a white screen from the original link.
Does it work for others?
And Rik you guessed someone would ask - what did you use to create it?

[rjlittlefield]

All the QuickTime stuff was generated by just QuickTime Player Pro. Open Image Sequence... followed by Save As... to make the initial .mov file, followed (much later) by Export for Web... to generate other movie formats and an html template that I edited to make the plugin-friendly page.

I am baffled that you keep getting a white screen on the .mov. What happens if you download the thing and run it from a local file?

--Rik

[ChrisR]

Yes the downloaded file plays when opened. Backwards and fowards they go , just forwards in the link 3 posts up.

Oh the joys of IE7. Perhaps it thinks from all those cavorting bodies it must be porn?

[Planapo]

The first link works fine for me.

I am amazed that, despite of all the movement that is recorded on video, stacking delivered such a good final image. Once more hats off to Zerene and its author!

--Betty

[rjlittlefield]

Thanks for the feedback, folks.

ChrisR, I still haven't figured out why some browsers show a white screen when directed to the first link. This message is coming from an IE7 and it works OK here. But I have also seen a white screen on another browser where I know (or think I do!) that a current QuickTime is installed. You are correct that the first link (direct to the .mov) should play forwards and backwards continuously. Movies reached by the second link (to a cover page) play only forwards. I don't why that difference, since I generated the second set using QuickTime Player Pro from the first one. It appears that there are autoplay and loop options for the plugin that could do what I want, but apparently they don't get set automatically when the HTML is generated by the Player.

Betty, having come back to this post after a couple of weeks away, I am amazed also that so much movement produced a decent final image! All I can say is that it took me a lot less time to get rid of the ghosts and echoes by retouching, than it took me to do the rest of the setup, shooting, and finishing/posting.

I think it would be very cool, though, to be able to shoot the stack in a couple of seconds instead of a couple of minutes. I am really interested in the new DSLRs that shoot HD video in addition to the usual stills. But I am made cautious by the review in the latest issue of Consumer Reports, which said that for the units they tested, HD video from the DSLRs was not as good as from even the least expensive HD camcorders.

--Rik