Andy Murray talks about photographing springtails in the field

[rjlittlefield]

Visit https://www.chaosofdelight.org/ and you will be instantly introduced to the world as photographed by Andy Murray, up close and personal with springtails going about their daily lives.

Visit https://youtu.be/0DShg_4Hlkk?t=1 , and you can listen to Andy talk about why and how he shoots those photos.

(Short summary... First, fall in love with the little critters. Then, learn to stop way down with MP-E 65 plus added magnification from extension rings and teleconverter. Shoot single images or shallow stacks handheld, aiming for natural appearance of live critters doing their normal things.)

Disclaimer... The video was made as a recording of one of the periodic livestreams of Allan Walls' Patreon group. You'll find my name in the title, but I'm not quite sure why since the reason I showed up was to listen to Andy! Anyway, I'm a paying member of Allan's Patreon group because I learn from what he puts together and I want to see him keep doing it. The interactive Zoom meetings are fun also.

--Rik

[MarkSturtevant]

A very pleasurable discussion!
The mpe65mm is well matched now with some of the manual super macros (I am just now learning to use the Laowa 2.5-5x), but there there is still a kind of advantage to having the electronic aperture in the mpe65. There are a couple lenses for m4/3 that can get into the 2x range with electronic aperture, and maybe those can be cobbled into something to shoot tiny fauna with extension tubes and diopters.

The mentioning of Topaz Sharpen AI reminds me of other advances in imaging software where AI imaging programs are now learning to make astonishing pictures, realistic or cartoony or artistic.

In many years of searching, I've never seen a globular springtail. Folks have assured me they are super abundant, but I see everything but them, and its not for the lack of looking.

[rjlittlefield]

The mentioning of Topaz Sharpen AI reminds me of other advances in imaging software where AI imaging programs are now learning to make astonishing pictures, realistic or cartoony or artistic.

For more amusement... Just yesterday I received an email from Topaz Labs:

We released Gigapixel AI v6.1 with Face Recovery AI which restores texture and detail to low-res, highly compressed faces.

They included a link to https://www.topazlabs.com/learn/gigapixel-ai-v6-1-upscale-face-recovery . Among other things it includes a discussion of this image: https://assets-global.website-files.com ... arison.jpg , which I think is a pretty powerful demonstration of their software providing synthetic detail that looks completely plausible, even though it may or may not be objectively correct. More and more, I'm coming to think of such programs as photorealistic painting robots, rather than image filters.

--Rik