Lichen & Fungi Mix

[beetleman]

This is a dead branch that fell from a tree. I am not sure how high it was. The lichen looks like it is producing its fruiting bodies (apothecia) and I am not sure if the fungi are alive (the whiter ones might be). Field of view in the picture is around 5cm and the fungi, mid left side is 1cm in diameter. This is a stack of 5 pictures and this time I moved the focus rail .5cm for each shot just to get more DOF.

1/60
F4
ISO100
natural light, full frame

[Cyclops]

Neat, fungi are cool things, and we only see them when they 'flower'

Interesting that you used stacking, I thought that was for photomicrography,and this view is about 2 inches across, must have had a shollw DOF! What camera/lens you using?

[beetleman]

Hi Cyclops, in the normal shot there would have been a few things out of focus, probably the fungi on top of the stick, the board on the bottom maybe. I am at work right now (do not tell my boss ) so I don`t have the pictures here to look at, but the small stack does fill in some DOF in the picture (not much like you said)
Canon PowerShot S1 IS with Canon 250D closeup lens

[rjlittlefield]

Hi all,

I posted reply to this issue as "Maximum DOF without stacking", in the Technique forum.

Hope this helps,
--Rik

[beetleman]

Great explanation on this issue Rik, thank you. What I would like to see is the camera makers put in a stack feature like, ten shots forward or back from focus point at 1mm, 2mm, and 3mm whatever increments you specify. With everything motorized and computer controlled in the cameras, it would probably take about 50 lines of code to do. I just feel that if the subject is not moving and I am using my tripod and I am taking a closeup of something, why not go for a stack and get that little extra DOF. Thanks again Rik.

[rjlittlefield]

Doug,

Yep, I'd like to see that feature too. It would be particularly nice, and easier to implement, on these highly integrated point and shoot cameras with built-in macro where the camera's processor can know everything there is to know about how the lens is set.

I'd propose a different user interface, though.

Let the user specify how much DOF is needed. From that, plus the resolution and aperture, the camera can compute the required number of frames. Tie it into the metering system and make Extended DOF be just another mostly automatic mode.

Ideally you wouldn't even require the user to specify DOF as a number. Tie that into the focus system and treat it kind of like focus lock. The user's job is only to focus on the front of what s/he cares about, push a button, then focus on the back and push again. The camera now knows DOF also, and everything can be fully automatic after that.

--Rik

[MacroLuv]

I would like to see that feature for the moving subjects too! By the way I heard somewhere about experimental "liquid" lens that can change geometry extremely fast uder magnetic field.

[beetleman]

Another thing that effects DOF would be how 3D the subject is. DOF works great on flat items. Also, angle of the subject to the lens of the camera. If I wanted to capture more of this stick with the lichens, I could angle it away from the camera and with stacking I could get a few more inches in the frame (and still in focus) and still keep the field of view the same (like the shotgun demo on the helicon focus website)

[DaveW]

I remembered reading about a lens that could have it's field curved for 3D objects. I have just done a search and found this link:-

http://www.rokkorfiles.com/24mm%20VFC.htm

MacroLuv I think this is the one you mean:-

http://www.research.philips.com/newscen ... enses.html

http://cio.co.nz/cio.nsf/0/32CF26EC42F6 ... enDocument

DaveW

[beetleman]

How about liquid mirrors for telescopes
http://www.astro.ubc.ca/LMT/lm/index.html