Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by Beatsy »

Just wandering the garden checking out my new A1 with the Sony 90mm macro lens today. First pic is of a day-flying mint moth - Pyrausta aurata. I've seen these "in the wild" but this is the first I recall seeing in my garden.
Pyrausta aurata - mint moth pmn.jpg
I tried a few handheld focus stacks at 30fps too. Why not? It's there to use. Lens was in manual focus and I used high-ish shutter speeds and (high) auto-ISO for natural light shooting (partly cloudy). It's much easier to do handheld stacking captures at the higher frame rate (compared to using my other cameras). All these stacks contain around 20 to 30 images each (out of 40-50 taken, each). No retouching. There are a several subject movement problems visible, but these were only casual tests so I'm not putting any time into editing them. Encouraging results for future, serious goes though. These were a big improvement over my previous attempts (in terms of capturing frames evenly and steadily and the outcomes). Another "gear matters" episode I think! :D
calpop-pmn.jpg
aphrose-pmn.jpg
weed-pmn.jpg

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by gardenersassistant »

Lovely moth.

Good use of a fast capture rate. I have been using 30 fps for natural light botanical close-up stacks for over three years now. I find 30 fps makes it entirely practical to work hand-held.
Nick

Flickr
Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by Beatsy »

gardenersassistant wrote:
Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:16 pm
Lovely moth.

Good use of a fast capture rate. I have been using 30 fps for natural light botanical close-up stacks for over three years now. I find 30 fps makes it entirely practical to work hand-held.
Thanks Nick,

Yeah, I know the technique has been around since the ark and 30fps long available on other cameras. But my personal proficiency at the handheld part has been very slow developing - until now. The A1's frame rate, no blackout in the *enormous* hi-res viewfinder and improved stabilisation (which was already brilliant on other Sony models) all added up to push me over the hump. I can now do handheld focus bracketing to a standard I'm happy with. This is using Sony A1 though so I'll continue practicing to improve my skills with "lesser" cameras too. Always good to be less dependent on "assists" where you can.

Here's a focus-bracketed shot from this morning, taken in a calm spell after rain. This was shot completely free-standing handheld, a short burst of 35 images while rotating the focus ring. It honestly looked like the camera was on a rail with only a few pixels movement between frames in the worst cases. I've never got that sort of handheld capture consistency before and it makes a step-change difference for me. All natural light too - which I like very much. I'm a happy and busy camper at the moment - despite my arms aching from the constant camera use (last 3 days non-stop) and my hard drives filling up too fast... :D
2021-06-06-09.32.24 ZS PMax_1.jpg
2021-06-06-11.14.01 ZS PMax_000_1.jpg

dolmadis
Posts: 899
Joined: Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:51 pm
Location: UK

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by dolmadis »

Hi Beatsy

Great results which will entice me out with Canon Focus Bracketing.

I don’t know anything about the equivalent Sony functions and it may be that they are not!!

Forgive me but I need to ask a naive question.

Are you recording video whilst running variable manual focus and then extracting frames for stacking?

I might have totally misunderstood in which I stand ready to be educated.

Best, John

Beatsy
Posts: 2105
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2013 3:10 am
Location: Malvern, UK

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by Beatsy »

dolmadis wrote:
Sun Jun 06, 2021 5:39 am
Hi Beatsy
<snip>
Are you recording video whilst running variable manual focus and then extracting frames for stacking?
Hi John,

No, the Sony A1 can shoot 50 megapixel compressed raw at 30fps. I'm just holding the shutter down and capturing frames while manually turning the focus ring. No video.

Here's a 100% crop from the stack above - but I exported the images for stacking at 50% size (for speed - lots to test). So this one is half the size (linear resolution) of the originals
2021-06-06-09.32.24 ZS PMax_1_1.jpg

gardenersassistant
Posts: 190
Joined: Sun May 31, 2009 5:21 am
Location: North Somerset, England

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by gardenersassistant »

Beatsy wrote:
Sun Jun 06, 2021 4:49 am
gardenersassistant wrote:
Sat Jun 05, 2021 3:16 pm
Lovely moth.

Good use of a fast capture rate. I have been using 30 fps for natural light botanical close-up stacks for over three years now. I find 30 fps makes it entirely practical to work hand-held.
Thanks Nick,

Yeah, I know the technique has been around since the ark and 30fps long available on other cameras. But my personal proficiency at the handheld part has been very slow developing - until now. The A1's frame rate, no blackout in the *enormous* hi-res viewfinder and improved stabilisation (which was already brilliant on other Sony models) all added up to push me over the hump. I can now do handheld focus bracketing to a standard I'm happy with. This is using Sony A1 though so I'll continue practicing to improve my skills with "lesser" cameras too. Always good to be less dependent on "assists" where you can.

Here's a focus-bracketed shot from this morning, taken in a calm spell after rain. This was shot completely free-standing handheld, a short burst of 35 images while rotating the focus ring. It honestly looked like the camera was on a rail with only a few pixels movement between frames in the worst cases. I've never got that sort of handheld capture consistency before and it makes a step-change difference for me. All natural light too - which I like very much. I'm a happy and busy camper at the moment - despite my arms aching from the constant camera use (last 3 days non-stop) and my hard drives filling up too fast... :D

2021-06-06-09.32.24 ZS PMax_1.jpg
2021-06-06-11.14.01 ZS PMax_000_1.jpg
It's working very well. It's wonderful when you get a step change like that.

btw my 30 fps is with video (currently 6K video). The camera handles the lens racking; it is an entirely point and shoot procedure.
Nick

Flickr
Blog
Journey since 2007

Rework and reposts of my images posted in this forum are always welcome, especially if they come with an explanation of what you did and how you did it.

Dalantech
Posts: 694
Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:57 am

Re: Mint moth and handheld, natural-light flower stacks

Post by Dalantech »

The results you're getting look really good!

I'm hoping that the tech advances to a point where I can go after active subjects and shoot the frames fast enough for a stack. But the frame rate would have to be in the 10,000 FPS range just to get a 1/2000 of a second time slice, and that's only stacking 5 frames. Me thinks the hardest part would be getting enough good light to expose a small scene at that frame rate -no point in going to all that trouble if I'm losing detail due to the light being too specular.

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