Small brown moth on Corian sink

[rjlittlefield]

I found this little moth sitting on the inside of a white sink in my kitchen.

I thought it was interesting but figured that it would fly away if I tried to move it, and I couldn't get any of my standard stacking gear to sit stable and reach down to where the moth was.

So, I decided this was a good time to try the approach I've recently read about: fire continuously while slowly leaning in.

That worked surprisingly well, once I gave up the idea of shooting raw because my card can't write nearly fast enough to keep up.

Handheld, 27 frames at about 0.2 mm average spacing, Canon T1i camera, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM plus 68 mm Kenko extension tubes, ISO 100, f/5.0, Canon Speedlite 580 EX II with ETTL metering. Full frame width is about 12.2 mm, the moth is 8.7 mm from end to end. Zerene Stacker DMap with default settings.

Brightness adjusted in Photoshop, but this is the original saturation. It's kind of odd, because looking at the moth with just my eyes, it didn't seem nearly this bold. Not sure what all is going on there. Something about being able to see the details, I suppose.

Here's a 100% crop.



Hope this little fellow brightens your day. I realized afterward that I should have shot a "surroundings" picture for context, but the moth was gone by the time I thought to do that.

--Rik

[ChrisR]

To repeat what you said recently, whatever you did it seems to have worked!
I'm always surprised how well the software can align the images of the subject as I wriggle about while approaching. A white sink is of course feauture-free which helps. If there's something strong to confuse the alignment process towards the edge of the frame, such as a highlight from something out of focus, it's worth eliminating it in each frame, in Photoshop. (If you load say a dozen source images into layers in PS, you can eg apply much the same Masked heavy "Gaussian Blur" to each one and save it out separately, quite quickly.)
I don't have Brian(LordV)'s manipulative precision so shoot too many frames, to be sure get them to overlap. Sometimes they're even out of order, which doesn't seem to matter too much.

I've been looking at the Canon Txi series. It seems the more expensive such as 7D have more channels for unloading the sensor so do it faster.

[Cyberspider]

the second one is a fantastic scale (?). Good work!

[Harold Gough]

So, I decided this was a good time to try the approach I've recently read about: fire continuously while slowly leaning in.

That worked surprisingly well, once I gave up the idea of shooting raw because my card can't write nearly fast enough to keep up.

That's the method I have in mind when I get around to some live subject stacking. Very encouraging.

Harold

[Simon W]

Handheld?! Woah, a great demo & u must have a steady hand as well. No hiccups, literally.

[rjlittlefield]

To repeat what you said recently, whatever you did it seems to have worked!
I'm always surprised how well the software can align the images of the subject as I wriggle about while approaching. A white sink is of course feauture-free which helps. If there's something strong to confuse the alignment process towards the edge of the frame, such as a highlight from something out of focus, it's worth eliminating it in each frame, in Photoshop.

Thanks, and thanks for the tip about alignment. On the infamous list of future enhancements, there's an item to allow indicating on the master image what you care about, i.e., where the subject is. For now, featureless backgrounds are a huge help, either natural or synthetic.

Handheld?! Woah, a great demo & u must have a steady hand as well. No hiccups, literally.

The end of the lens was sliding on the side of the sink. Nonetheless, it's challenging to keep things lined up perfectly at this scale. As ChrisR says, software alignment is critical. Here's what the stack looks like without it.



--Rik