Fruit Fly

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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pwnell
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Fruit Fly

Post by pwnell »

I like red wine. A lot. So what do you do as macro photographer when fruit flies invade this peaceful tranquility? You catch them and photograph them of course!

I had some issues with a deep stack on the second portrait. The antennae did not stack properly. With Rik's help I managed to get a better stack. Both are ZereneStacker PMax, and taken at 10x (the second one has an additional 1.6x magnification). Oh if the sharpening is a bit too much blame Flickr. The second stack is 701 images deep :o

Image
20120910-DSLR_IMG_0001_1.jpg by pwnell, on Flickr

Image
20120911-DSLR_IMG_0234-Edit.jpg by pwnell, on Flickr

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Excellent -- this came out great! That 10X NA 0.40 sure is sharp, but the wide aperture means deep stacks.

I know you had to un-check all those alignment parameters and do a Stack Selected on the antennae, but I'm curious to know exactly how you did the final merging of antennae over the eyes. Was that done with the Photoshop layers with masks and Darken/Lighten mode, or did you come up with some better way to do it?

--Rik

pwnell
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Location: Tsawwassen, Canada

Post by pwnell »

rjlittlefield wrote:I know you had to un-check all those alignment parameters and do a Stack Selected on the antennae, but I'm curious to know exactly how you did the final merging of antennae over the eyes. Was that done with the Photoshop layers with masks and Darken/Lighten mode, or did you come up with some better way to do it?

--Rik
I'd love to know how to do the darken/lighten cloning, but I don't. I used photoshop to merge the two layers, by using a layer mask at 400x and picking out the antenna by hand.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

That works. The single mask is more labor intensive, but it can make a better result too.

--Rik

Jacek
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Post by Jacek »

excellent photos

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Waldo,

Excellent work!

With only 3mm of working distance I am curious, how did you illuminated these?

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

Charles Krebs wrote:Waldo,

Excellent work!

With only 3mm of working distance I am curious, how did you illuminated these?
I used this:

Image

Very unsophisticated. Basically three Ikea lamps to the back, left and right of the objective. The objective is wrapped inside a paper cylinder (shaded image). This extends to below the subject.

It is very hard to work like this because I cannot see anything. My first subject was bumped off the pin because I drove the objective into the pin :(

PS: Exposure times were ISO200 and 1/8 so long exposures were needed.

Marek Mis
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Post by Marek Mis »

Waldo,

Excellent and beautiful photomicrographs !

Marek

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