Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 5/0.15 LMPlanFL, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Mitutoyo 10/0.28 M Plan Apo, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 50/0.50 LMPlanFL N, Canon T3i.
Moth eggs
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Charles Krebs
- Posts: 5865
- Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 pm
- Location: Issaquah, WA USA
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Moth eggs
Came across these on a broad blade of grass.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 5/0.15 LMPlanFL, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Mitutoyo 10/0.28 M Plan Apo, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 50/0.50 LMPlanFL N, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 5/0.15 LMPlanFL, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Mitutoyo 10/0.28 M Plan Apo, Canon T3i.
Nikon MM-11 microscope, Olympus U-TLU, Olympus 50/0.50 LMPlanFL N, Canon T3i.
Charlie,
Incredible quality shots !
What kind of lighting have you used ? The detail and the lighting is beautiful. How many frames does every image consist of ?
First class images ! That's typical for you ;-)
Marek
Incredible quality shots !
What kind of lighting have you used ? The detail and the lighting is beautiful. How many frames does every image consist of ?
First class images ! That's typical for you ;-)
Marek
Last edited by Marek Mis on Wed Sep 05, 2012 6:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Charles Krebs
- Posts: 5865
- Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 pm
- Location: Issaquah, WA USA
- Contact:
Thanks for the kind remarks!
Marek:
A simple cylinder of Lee diffusion material, illuminated by an electronic flash on either side. One is the "main light" the other is set to a lower power to fill in shadows on the opposite side.
The 5X shot is a 23 image stack.
The 10X shot is a 27 image stack.
The 50X shot is 106 images. (Most of it came together with a much smaller stack but the lower left corner required quite a few additional images just to get the faint detail in the shadows.
Marek:
Here's a quick snapshot of the way it was illuminated:What kind of lighting have you used ? The detail and the lighting is beautiful. How many frames does every image consist of ?
A simple cylinder of Lee diffusion material, illuminated by an electronic flash on either side. One is the "main light" the other is set to a lower power to fill in shadows on the opposite side.
The 5X shot is a 23 image stack.
The 10X shot is a 27 image stack.
The 50X shot is 106 images. (Most of it came together with a much smaller stack but the lower left corner required quite a few additional images just to get the faint detail in the shadows.
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RogelioMoreno
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- Location: Panama
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Charles Krebs
- Posts: 5865
- Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:02 pm
- Location: Issaquah, WA USA
- Contact:
Javier,
I get equivalent "sharpness" using flash or continuous light. The grass with the eggs was mounted on a black plastic "slide" with a hole in it. I had intended to try a shot with light coming from underneath, through the grass. With the stage I use this is very easy to do with a flash unit, but it is not that easy to position one of those Ikea lights in the proper position... and their light output is really too low for this use as well. So I had gotten out a couple of electronic flash units. The backlit shots didn't look good so I gave up on that idea. I knew the lighting for the eggs would be relatively simple and straightforward, so I set it up using the electronic flash.
One nice thing about electronic flash is that the camera sensors are essentially native "daylight balanced". If you use tungsten or the Ikea LED lights (which seem to be around 3000k with some of the color "spikes" typical of LEDs) you can get good color with a custom white balance. But you are making up for the "warm" light by increasing the gain on the blue channel. At least "in theory", it should be better to use a light source more closely balanced to the native color balance of the sensor... less noise in the blue channel, less chance of clipping in the red channel with certain color subjects. (In practice I don't really know how critical this really is with many of the typical subjects here... look at all the great looking shots posted that were taken with the Ikea lights! And often the ability to carefully position continuous light sources while you observe the lighting on the subject makes them the more desirable light source to me).
I get equivalent "sharpness" using flash or continuous light. The grass with the eggs was mounted on a black plastic "slide" with a hole in it. I had intended to try a shot with light coming from underneath, through the grass. With the stage I use this is very easy to do with a flash unit, but it is not that easy to position one of those Ikea lights in the proper position... and their light output is really too low for this use as well. So I had gotten out a couple of electronic flash units. The backlit shots didn't look good so I gave up on that idea. I knew the lighting for the eggs would be relatively simple and straightforward, so I set it up using the electronic flash.
One nice thing about electronic flash is that the camera sensors are essentially native "daylight balanced". If you use tungsten or the Ikea LED lights (which seem to be around 3000k with some of the color "spikes" typical of LEDs) you can get good color with a custom white balance. But you are making up for the "warm" light by increasing the gain on the blue channel. At least "in theory", it should be better to use a light source more closely balanced to the native color balance of the sensor... less noise in the blue channel, less chance of clipping in the red channel with certain color subjects. (In practice I don't really know how critical this really is with many of the typical subjects here... look at all the great looking shots posted that were taken with the Ikea lights! And often the ability to carefully position continuous light sources while you observe the lighting on the subject makes them the more desirable light source to me).
Thank you Charles for the extra feedback.
Yes, the power output from those IKEA led lamps is not very powerfull, but normally up to 10X I do not have problems with long exposure times.
However it is true that when working at high magnification I have to use long exposure times, which can add its own kind of noise (related to exposures over 1"). But using flash also means I have to use long exposure time to compensate for the loss of EFSC so I dont really know what is best.
To tell the truth I though that WB settings just were changing the value of each colour. When you use RAW the WB is not embeded on the file (like with JPG) so this gain in the blue channel is not hardware gain sure, still what you say makes lots of sense. My LED lamps also work in the 3000k range, but deppending on the diffuser used this changes. I guess those LEE diffusing matterial are properly calibrated which is on its own a reason to buy them.
There is a trick I use sometimes which I think helps to get a perfect exposure. I take a completely overexposed shot (pure white, histogram completely clipping to the right; no colour information at all) and use it as the custom WB shot. Then the images you take with this custom WB setting look green but this is the true way sensors see (2 green pixels 1 red and 1 blue). This works great on some EOS cameras, 5D mkII being one of them ( I know that some camera brands/models will not accept this kind of overexposed shot for WB setting). Of course this only works if you shot RAW, as you need to fix files later before stacking.
Regards
Javier
Yes, the power output from those IKEA led lamps is not very powerfull, but normally up to 10X I do not have problems with long exposure times.
However it is true that when working at high magnification I have to use long exposure times, which can add its own kind of noise (related to exposures over 1"). But using flash also means I have to use long exposure time to compensate for the loss of EFSC so I dont really know what is best.
To tell the truth I though that WB settings just were changing the value of each colour. When you use RAW the WB is not embeded on the file (like with JPG) so this gain in the blue channel is not hardware gain sure, still what you say makes lots of sense. My LED lamps also work in the 3000k range, but deppending on the diffuser used this changes. I guess those LEE diffusing matterial are properly calibrated which is on its own a reason to buy them.
There is a trick I use sometimes which I think helps to get a perfect exposure. I take a completely overexposed shot (pure white, histogram completely clipping to the right; no colour information at all) and use it as the custom WB shot. Then the images you take with this custom WB setting look green but this is the true way sensors see (2 green pixels 1 red and 1 blue). This works great on some EOS cameras, 5D mkII being one of them ( I know that some camera brands/models will not accept this kind of overexposed shot for WB setting). Of course this only works if you shot RAW, as you need to fix files later before stacking.
Regards
Javier