Silverfish

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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abpho
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Silverfish

Post by abpho »

I will tell you that this image was a ton of work. I was almost going to toss the whole data set. But then I thought about my problem, and about how the stacking algorithms work. That's when I changed my approach, and the resulting image turned out much more promising. At this point I still had to deal with a very dirty specimen. What followed was over 3 hours in Photoshop to clean up and enhance the image. My eyes hurt, I am dizzy and I am tired. But first I'll share my endevours with you.

The image consists of 341 images taken at 5micro intervals. The total depth of field is around 1.7mm. The horizontal field of view is around 2.24mm.

The setup:
The image was taken with a Mitty 10x on a Canon EF 200/2.8L II lens with a Canon EOS 7D Mark II APS-C crop sensor camera. Camera settings were ISO160, 1/200sec, f/8 (I forgot to open up the "tube" lens), mirror lockup with a 2 second delay. Images were captured as RAW and converted to TIFFs using Canon's Digital Photo Professional software package.

The light source was a single Canon 580EX II speedlite located on camera left (8 o'clock position when looking down) fired through a Styrofoam dixie cup diffuser at 1/32 power. The effective shutter speed is around 1/7500 sec.

I used a white piece of foam as my background. By changing the relative position to the flash I can control it's brightness.

Eureka moment:
At first I stacked all 341 images in one pass using both the PMAX and DMAP options. This is where I did not like how the image looked. PMAX was too grainy and contrasty, and DMAP had too many HUGE halos to edit out. That is when I realized what I needed to change. I created 49 DMAP slabs, which were then PMAX stacked. No noise, no contrast changes, and almost no halos.

This was followed by lots of cloning and healing. A lot of these touch ups were done while viewing the image at 200-400% magnification. Towards the end I was not as careful and got a little rammy.

Without any further ado, here is the final image followed up the before image.

After:
Image

Before:
Image

Thanks for looking. Now to hit the sack.

Cheer!S
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

JH
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Post by JH »

:D The final image is superb.
Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg
Jörgen Hellberg, my webbsite www.hellberg.photo

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Looks like one of those stacks where each image gives you, apparently, nothing at all!
It's come out well. May I steal it as an excellent portrayal of one of nature's poorer eyes?

One has to wonder what sort of an image the beast has to work with.
11 pixels or 11 images? I should be able to look it up :lol:
Chris R

microman
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Post by microman »

Good job on cleaning it up and awsome picture !

Rudix
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Location: South Africa

Post by Rudix »

Stunning image and worth the hard work.

Thanks for sharing and the tip on doing the stack in stages!
Rudi
Rudi

leonardturner
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Post by leonardturner »

I haven't seen much mention lately of working with slabs, and had gotten away from doing much of it myself. Thanks for your observations; a good reminder of why to stack.

Really like that baby blue background with this subject; striking!

Leonard

abpho
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Post by abpho »

Thanks everyone. :)
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

zzffnn
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Post by zzffnn »

Very nice work! I appreciate your full story too. The improvement is obvious.
Selling my Canon FD 200mm F/2.8 lens

chuong nguyen
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Post by chuong nguyen »

Thanks for sharing. To do it right = hard work.

abpho
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Post by abpho »

Thanks zzffnn.
chuong nguyen wrote:Thanks for sharing. To do it right = hard work.
You are welcome.

I totally agree, but not necessarily is that always the case. Sometimes I get lucky and an image required minimal work, or no matter how much effort I put into an image, it will always be garbage. I've thrown out days worth of work in the past.

It's best to start with a clean, well preserved subject. I haven't gotten into cleaning, preserving, rehydrating, or chemically repairing my subjects. I guess I reply on photo editing to take care of some of theses things.
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

cadman342001
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Location: Cairns, FNQ, Australia

Post by cadman342001 »

I feel your pain ! but in this case the end result is definitely worth it.

When you say those pics are "before" and "after", do you mean before and after post processing or is one the straight stack and one the slabbed then stacked result ?

What software do you use to do your slabbing ?

I try and freeze my subjects as soon as possible after capture (none of that picking dead stuff up off the floor!) and photograph them straight out of the freezer (or at least as soon as they have thawed out which is about 2 minutes here in the Tropics!)

Andy

abpho
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Post by abpho »

Hello Andy, and thank you.

The images shown are before and after post processing.

The program is called Bugslabber. It's free and works exclusively with Zerene Stacker. PM me if you run into problems with Bugslabber.
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

GaryB
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Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:18 pm

Post by GaryB »

Excellent cleanup and very nice image.

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