Experiment

[Ib Mathiasen]

Hi - i am a new member on this great site

I have take macro´s for several year, but i just start using the teknik of stacked foto - and i like to show some of my early experiment of the teknik.
Somtimes it goes pretty well, but other times it´s a mess - and i have a lot to learn abaut this teknik.

In general there is lot og fine foto on this site - and its a real treat to look at

Both picture are of dead creature, and is taken with Canon D10 and Canon MP-E 65 /2.8 Macro



Second picture here is a close-up of the eye of a moth "Arctiidae"

[Ken Ramos]

Welcome to the forums Ib , I did not know a deceased insect could look so good. You do very well it seems, with image stacking. I am sure you will enjoy your membership with us and we look forward to seeing more of your work, again welcome aboard!

[Mike B in OKlahoma]

Welcome, and I'm glad to see another MP-E-65 shooter!

Good job on these. The fly could be improved by getting more light on the lower part of the image. A second flash is probably the way to go.

[rjlittlefield]

Welcome aboard, Ib! I'm glad to see another stacker!

These are very good stacks. I hope these are stacks that went "pretty well". If these are "a mess", we will need to adjust our standards!

But it is OK to post some messes too. (Maybe they go better over in the "Technique and Technical Discussions" than here in the gallery.)

With luck, sometimes we can figure out what the problems are. Everybody learns from that.

I especially like your Arctiid moth. I have never seen one so colorful. Sometimes hair is a problem, but the stacking worked very well here. At web resolution, it is very hard to see any artifacts at all. Very nicely done!

I agree with Mike that the fly could use more light on the underside. But I never recommend flash for stacking. It is hard to position because you have to take a picture to see what the effect will be. Also sometimes flash is not uniform from picture to picture (depends on the flash units), and I don't trust the software to correct for that. I get good results with incandescent. Sometimes ordinary desk lamps, sometimes fiber optic illuminator. Especially at high magnification, it works great to use fiber optic illuminator with pieces of pingpong balls for diffusers.

Which stacking software are you using? What problems are you having?

And what more pictures do you have to show us?

--Rik

[beetleman]

Please let me extend my hand out to you and welcome you to the forums also Ib. We have a wonderful group of people here. I love the way the hairs stand out in the fly stack and and very nice detail on everything. I do like the second on a little better because of the colors.

[MacroLuv]

Welcome Ib!
Impressive photographs. Interesting punk fashion hairstyle moth.

[Ib Mathiasen]

Thank you for the warm welcome – I look forward to learn something from you, and it is a pleasure to meet people with the same interest and experience

Just now it is a bad time for insect here in Denmark, because it´ s a litte bit could – but then I can practise on collection of old insect, and of course read all the article and other good stuff her at this site

Mike: You right about the missing light on the lower part of the image – I think I have to build a lighttent – it should be nice to use

Rjlittlefield: Thank you for good advice – I will try with different light on my next experiment of “stakking”
The stacking software I am using is “Helicon Focus” – I´am not acquainted with other software
The biggest problem at the moment is “halo” in general – but as I se it the problem I biggest with hairy bugs


I vill in the nearest future find some picture with some of the problem I have with “stacking” – and of course other problems in general

[rjlittlefield]

Ib,

Helicon Focus is very good -- easily the best single package available at this time.

Halo and visibility errors are always a problem, especially with hairs and bristles that overlap each other. Wim van Egmond suggests shooting a background without the subject, to use with an opacity mask later. He also mentions running Helicon Focus twice, with different smoothing, then manually combining the two. See posts here and here. Halo is worse with light foreground and dark background, so choice of background may help. Some related issues are discussed here and in surrounding posts in the same topic. With some subjects, CombineZ5 (another software) gives much less halo while still handling the rest of the subject well.

Winter is definitely a good time to practice your stacking -- it works better with dead subjects anyway.

--Rik