A primrose panorama

elf · Post by **elf** » Thu May 07, 2009 10:30 pm

There are around 800 images focus stacked into a 4x5 pano of a primrose. It's just under 1x magnification and if printed at 240dpi would be 30"x55"

Larger version here (but resized by PhotoBucket): http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/ ... 48114a.jpg

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:31 pm

Wow, that's one big mosaic! And very tasteful -- like some oil painting.

How about posting out some kind of crop so we can appreciate how much detail there is in this thing?

Also of course I'm curious about the technical details. How was this done?

--Rik

rovebeetle · Post by **rovebeetle** » Thu May 07, 2009 11:56 pm

Agree with Rik's first line.

Just had a look at the larger file - very impressive. A real wall hanger.

Cheers

elf · Post by **elf** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:33 am

Well, the technical details were point and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot ...

It took about 4 hours of steady shooting to capture all of it. I used both rotation around the entrance pupil and back rise and fall. The center row was shot first, then the back (camera) was lowered and the top row shot. The bottom two rows were shot by raising the camera. The El-Nikkor 50mm seems to have a large enough image circle to do 4 full rows at this magnification. The focus stacks were done by moving only the camera so the lens/entrance pupil didn't move.

I shot in RAW + jpeg mode, but only used the jpegs. Zerene Stacker pMax was used to focus stitch the individual frames. Microsoft ICE was used to stitch the focus stacked frames and output in Photoshop layers. Each seam was manually blended in PhotoShop. The output from ICE was aligned very well, but there were a few places that required selecting the blend path. Levels were used on each layer to even out the lighthing and bring the background to black. The post processing took an additional 4 hours, but a lot of that time was just waiting for the computer to do the work.

To relate the size of the image, the border added for web display is 1250 pixels wide. Here's a 100% crop:

Aynia · Post by **Aynia** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:43 am

Wow, very beautiful, highly complicated and a helluva lot of work.

Well done.

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Fri May 08, 2009 2:08 am

Excellent work.

Not a technique for Morning Glory?

Harold

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Fri May 08, 2009 9:08 am

Amazing.

In these big projects, sometimes the devil can lie in the most prosaic details.

Like, how did you keep the subject from changing shape just a little bit in those four hours?

The last time I tried shooting anything as delicate as a primrose, I ended up with a better movie than a stack!

--Rik

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Fri May 08, 2009 12:23 pm

Sumptuous, elf.
A timeless image that anyone could stare at and enjoy.

Rik wrote:how did you keep the subject from changing shape

Next he'll tell us he spent the 4 hours with it in a refridgerator!

elf · Post by **elf** » Fri May 08, 2009 7:57 pm

rjlittlefield wrote: Like, how did you keep the subject from changing shape just a little bit in those four hours?

ICE does a pretty good job of morphing the images to fit and the individual focus stacks were shot fairly quickly. One 77 image stack took 16 minutes or a little over 12 seconds each. I'd say it was probably more a matter of luck than skill that this arrangement stayed stable enough to complete the shoot. I've had to abandon several recent attempts with other flowers where the movement was large enough to see between each image.

Harold Gough wrote: Not a technique for Morning Glory?

It might be fun to try. It could be the first gigapixel macro and would probably need 20 or 30,000 images

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Fri May 08, 2009 11:51 pm

We'll all be stacking from video soon.....

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sat May 09, 2009 12:28 am

Could well be. Canon just came out with their Rebel T1i. 15 Mpixel stills plus 1920x1080 @20 fps HD video. List price $800, body only. Very interesting device. Remains to be seen if the video frames are good enough to be worth stacking.

--Rik

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 12:07 am

Ed, congratulations on your selection for Administrators Appreciation Award for July.

This image is both very attractive and quite impressive on technical grounds -- a nice combination!

--Rik

elf · Post by **elf** » Wed Jul 01, 2009 5:49 pm

Thanks, I really appreciate the selection.

Here's a link to a Deep Zoom (Silverlight 2 required) of the image: http://www.efrench.members.winisp.net/C ... 114aDZ.htm

(updating url)

DQE · Post by **DQE** » Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:53 pm

Really beautiful result, and a heroic accomplishment.

I too love the painted feel this photograph has, which is presumably in part due to the wonderful lighting used.

One does wonder where technology will take us with respect to challenges like this in say 5 and then 10 years from today. It's hard to extrapolate in the presence of seemingly limitless exponential improvement in technologies. Moore's law is everywhere!