Carpenter Ant with Mitutoyo 2x, 10x, and 50x (images added)

[curt0909]

First test with a Mitutoyo 2x Planapo. 77 photos. 150mm mamiya used as tube lens which I don't recommend. I'll try again with a 200mm lens, hopefully tonight. All in all I'm happy with the quality of the center but the corners were poor and suffered from 'star' artifacts with stacking. The first image was heavily cropped (approx 2500x2500) to subject of interest. The second is actual pixels. I always feel weird posting these macro images in the microscope section but it was mounted on a vertical microscope set up.

100% crop

[Jacek]

Super

[curt0909]

I took more photos of this ant today with the Mitutoyo 10x paired with Nikkor 200mm f4. 181 photos. I'm very happy with the performance of these objectives. I may try the 20 and 50x later and see what other details are hiding here. Unfortunately my lighting and composition skills are non existant but I'm a work in progress.



100% crops





Just for fun the black and white SEM look

[Marek Mis]

Very good and interesting images !

Marek

[curt0909]

I jumped the 20x and went straight for the 50x Mitutoyo. Two images. First shot with Mamiya 150mm giving approx 37.5x (54 photos)and second with an old 200mm Nikkor f4 for 50x (31 photos). 100% crops with each photo. Stacking these compound eyes is a real pain at this magnification.

[curt0909]

Thanks Marek!

[canonian]

...First shot with Mamiya 150mm giving approx 37.5x and second with an old 200mm Nikkor f4 for 50x. 100% crops with each photo.

What a beautiful shot curt0909, I love the 37.5X photo.
It's so hard to keep up with the ever increasing quality of this forum.

[curt0909]

Thank you Fred

[Litonotus]

really great!

PS. how many images were in the 50x objective stack...? I'm just curious.

[curt0909]

Thanks Litonotus. I've just added the number of photos to my posts. The first 50x was 54 photos, second 31 photos.

[Lothar-Gutjahr]

Hello Curt,

Wow, what a nice toy, your lenses. You should keep them in a safe, grin.
May i ask about the tubelength you´r using ? Or do you cascade those lenses mentioned? Your imaging workflow would be interesting too, but i dont ask. Have a nice weekend !

Lothar

[curt0909]

Hi Lothar,
The Mitutoyos and hands down the best epi objectives I've used. These are infintie objectives so magnification is not calculated by tubelength but by tube lens. Tube lenses were 150 or 200mm. I'm happy to tell my workflow. Its pretty basic.

Stack with Zerene Pmax and retouch as needed. I've found images shot with the 50x benefit more from pyramid stacking. The first 50x photo was pyramid stacked the second was not. I've actually restacked the second photo with the pyramid method and prefer the results of the 2nd version. Elf and Chris S. have made programs (ZereneVS and Slabber Jockey) to automate the process but I'm unable to use them so I did this manually. The stacking was as follows. 31 images.
First the photos were stacked in blocks of 4 with 2 overlap on each side. 1-4, 3-6, 5-8, 7-10, etc.
2 of the resulting images were stacked with 1 overlap on each side.
1-2, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5, etc
3 of these resulting iamges were stacked with 1 overlap on each side
1-3, 3-5, 5-7, 7-9 etc.
3 of the reusltoing images stacked 1 overlap on each side
1-3, 3-5
The final two images stacked. Its actually beneficial to do this manually in this case since most sub stacks needed retouching.

After this I open in Photoshop. First process is smart sharpen to pull some more detail from the image. After that I always use the same 4 effects to tailor the image.
-Color filters set to blue(make sure preserve luminosity is selected)
-Color filters set to green(make sure preserve luminosity is selected)
-Curves
-Vibrance and Saturation
Finally I run Topaz denoise to clean it up a bit

Here is the restacked version of the 2nd 50x photo. I wasn't happy with the color so I desaturated it and later colorized it.

[rjlittlefield]

Nice images!

I've found images shot with the 50x benefit more from pyramid stacking. The first 50x photo was pyramid stacked the second was not. I've actually restacked the second photo with the pyramid method and prefer the results of the 2nd version. Elf and Chris S. have made programs (ZereneVS and Slabber Jockey) to automate the process but I'm unable to use them so I did this manually.

I think you're describing the process that we've come to call "slabbing".

I was initially confused by "pyramid stacking" because that phrase normally refers to stacking methods like PMax ("Pyramid Maximum") that internally operate on a pyramid of resized images. Google search on "pyramid methods in image processing" returns some good discussions.

--Rik

[curt0909]

Thanks Rik,
And thanks for the correction. Its interesting to know that they used a similar process to create the first synthetic lifeform. Maybe Craig Venter has been lurking here.

'From here, the team devised a five stage assembly process where the cassettes were joined together in subassemblies to make larger and larger pieces that would eventually be combined to build the whole synthetic M. genitalium genome.'

http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/%20pro ... s-release/

[Lothar-Gutjahr]

Thanks Curt and Rik,

for me as a beginner in stacking it starts getting interesting how more variations like the mentioned slabbing is used. I did not understand when it is time to use it. This happens easy when your "life time waranty" is run out. Learning by doing is much better in my case. But what to do,grin.

Thank you both for your comments.

Lothar