Surirellae

[sushidelic]

Hello,

here are two Surirellae Spec., taken with the help of my newly aquired Wemacro Micromate. It still has some flaws and glitches, but when it works, it is a really nice and helpful piece of hardware!

Surirella Spec., Olympus 100x 1.35 UPLANAPO, DIC HR, 276 images stacked


Surirella Spec., Olympus 100x 1.35 UPLANAPO, oblique lighting + Pol, 193 images stacked


Best regards,
Michael

[Jacek]

Very nice

[sushidelic]

Thanks Jacek!

[Marek Mis]

Excellent images !

Marek

[zzffnn]

Very nice images, thank you for sharing!

[Olympusman]

Very very nice.

Mike

[sushidelic]

Thanks for your comments! Here's another one:



Best regards,
Michael

[Cactusdave]

Exceptional images, especially number 2 which gives a wonderfully 3D perspective. There are a lot of images in these stacks, close to impossible without an automated focus control. Have you tried any stereos? Maybe use every second image for the stereo? Also please tell us more about your experience with the Wemacro Micromate, good and bad. It looks a really cool piece of kit and my finger has been hovering on the buy button, but there hasn't been much comment on it here that I can find.

[sushidelic]

Hi Dave,

I already did a quick test with the last one in stereo, here it is.
There are problems with the glary edge due to the DIC, so it would need a lot of retouch in Zerene. It is not so apparent in the "mono" version, so i decided to spare the work and leave it as it was.



Regarding the Micromate - it is really helpful and an absolute bargain for the price. Its basically just a stepper attached to the fine focus drive, and a control unit that connects to the stepper, the camera and your phone via Bluetooth (or a PC with usb). With the app, you can control the stepper and the timings.

Good things:
- when it works, it's awesome.
- You can also consider it as an automated camera and stepper control. So if you are up to DIY, you can just unscrew the stepper from the stand and use all the stuff to drive any kind of rail you can attach a stepper to.

Critics:
-Aluminium Bracket holding the "ring" that connects to the drive was bent. Unscrewed, straightened, works now.
-You quickly realize that the App is completely set up for the Wemacro rail. I couldn't figure out a way to adapt the units to my fine focus drive (maybe you can, and I was just plain stupid). That ain't the biggest problem, as I found out that setting the step size to 2µm equals roughly 200nm on my drive, so that's ok.
- Worse is, you cannot set the Backlash below 140µm (what can make sense for his rail), which affects the way it goes back to your "starting" position and misses it. As I have literally zero backlash on the fine focus gear, this is a bit annoying. But after it returned to the starting position, you can manually adjust it again and start from there, so no big deal.
- It sometimes took me 20+ tries to get the app connected to the device. It always crashes on attempt. So many tries, that at a point I thought it is completely broken. But without any repeatable methodology, somewhen it manages to connect, and then it reliably stays connected.

Resume: That kit definitely stays, I hope for software improvements.
I am usually shooting at 25 ISO with exposure times between 1 and 20 seconds, so now shooting a stack with 300 images and 20 seconds exposure just means waiting for roughly two hours. Before, that meant getting nuts. And while that thing precisely does the work, more precise than you could do it, and with less vibrations, you can have a beer or two. Love it.

Best regards,
Michael

[Cactusdave]

Thanks Michael, there's a lot of useful information there about the Micromate, and that stereo is nice. Seems like there are some serious frustrations and annoyances, but your pictures show that it can really be great when it does work. The Bluetooth connection issue would drive me nuts. Hopefully it can be addressed in an update. Your exposure times are pretty long. I quite often work in the 1-3 second area, but 20 seconds is looooong , unfeasibly long if you are doing a big manual stack. What camera are you using with a base ISO of 25?

[sushidelic]

Hi Dave,

for most of the stacks I'm between 1 and 4 seconds. I did some sets manually with longer exposure times, and it's not only driving you nuts:) - thus the micromate, as I usually turned up the ISO in that case, which I now don't need to anymore, just wait a bit longer. The really good thing with long exposures additionally to the low noise level is the complete elimination of the shutter shock, which is pretty strong when using the D800 as I do (even with exposure delay on, which is basically a one click mirror lockup).
It's usually set to ISO L1.0, which I thought corresponds to ISO 25 - I just read it up on the net and apparently it seems to be ISO 50, with even some drawbacks to ISO 100. Good to know and thanks to making me doublecheck this. L1.0 seems likely to destroy the dynamic range in the highlights as it is just an internal "hack", so better I stick to ISO 100 in the future.

Best regards,
Michael