Christmas cactus

elf · Post by **elf** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 2:33 am

Here's the first successful stacked and stitched image that I've done by moving the camera instead of focusing with the lens. It has 2 frames with 30 stacked images. Each image was 1:1.

Olympus e330
35mm macro
f11
1/3 sec

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 6:45 am

Looks great at this size!

Can you point us off to a full-resolution image?

A couple of technical questions...
1) How big is this thing?
2) What technique did you end up using, to move the camera?

--Rik

elf · Post by **elf** » Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:50 pm

Image size: 4768x6550 pixels or 16x22 inches. The subject is about an inch long and 3/8 inch wide.

My spherical pano head has a linear slide on the horizontal arm, so it's pretty straight forward for adjusting distance. I rotated the pano head for the second frame instead of shifting the camera laterally. I'll try to get some decent shots of my new pano head this weekend. It's very similar to the one here http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... php?t=3761 The new one has several more linear slides for vertical and horizontal movement. I'll probably try to add a lead screw to the horizontal arm to better control the focusing.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/ ... 20775p.jpg

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:19 am

Excellent! Lead screw on the horizontal arm would be very cool. If you're not familiar with the Really Right Stuff B150-B it might be worth looking at, for ideas if nothing else.

I'm curious about the pixel counts. I think I'm hearing 4768x6550 from only 2 frames. That suggests a really big sensor or some resizing after the shoot. What's the story?

--Rik

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:33 am

A beautiful picture elf. My cactus just finished blooming also

elf · Post by **elf** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 10:39 pm

rjlittlefield wrote: I'm curious about the pixel counts. I think I'm hearing 4768x6550 from only 2 frames. That suggests a really big sensor or some resizing after the shoot. What's the story?

For some reason, I had ACR output set to 12mp instead of 7.5. I suppose now I'll have to pixel peep to see if there is any detail loss

beetleman wrote:A beautiful picture elf. My cactus just finished blooming also

Thanks, we also have a red one that is well over 30 years old and is just starting to bloom.

p.s. The new pano head images are in this thread: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... m.php?f=25

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Dec 02, 2007 11:11 pm

elf wrote:For some reason, I had ACR output set to 12mp instead of 7.5. I suppose now I'll have to pixel peep to see if there is any detail loss

Well, you're probably not going to lose any detail that the sensor originally caught. On the other hand, producing 31,230,400 pixels from only 14,751,744 sensor positions does seem likely to yield some redundancy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, since the stacking algorithms all involve interpolation, which in theory at least is best done with intermediate images that are a bit larger than the originals.

I like to use the reduce/expand test. Reduce your output image to fraction X of original. Then expand the reduced version by 1/X. Layer the result with the original and click the layer on/off so as to rapidly toggle between the layers. If you can see differences, then you know that X isn't enough to contain all the data. If you can't, it is.

That pano head with lead screw positioning is a thing of beauty, BTW.

--Rik

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:41 am

Lovely graceful thing!