First attempt at studio stacks and question. Fly and Earwig.

[TheLostVertex]

Here is my first try at doing studio style stacks. Done using a reversed lens @ 18mm plus some extension tubes. Measured to be about 4.3:1 I am open to any criticisms or comments you have

I also have a question. I am using the trial of Zerene stacker and I think I have it mostly figured out, but I am wondering what effect that "reverse order" has on the final output. I would assume it would do nothing for pmax, but I am not totally sure what effect it might have on dmap. I tried searching here and the Zerene website and didnt find any info on it.

Anyways, here are the images.


The Mimic by TheLostVertex, on Flickr


Waiter, theres a fly on my lens. by TheLostVertex, on Flickr

And I did a triptych with some other tests I did with the earwig.

Earwig pinchers by TheLostVertex, on Flickr

Everything is dmap except the forcep closeups in the triptych.
Thanks for reading/looking.

[oxkarthemighty]

Cool shots chief. Im not sure what the reverse order does with Zerene, but when I was using Combine I would always reverse the group before I stacked them. It helped the alignment. It seems like Zerene will reverse the stack initially and work from the back to the front already...Why Combine didnt do that (when I was using it) I have no idea.

[rjlittlefield]

Looking good!

By default, Zerene Stacker reverses the order if necessary so as to start at whichever end has the narrower field of view. That can be either the front or the back, depending on the optics and exactly how you focus, for example by moving the camera versus turning the focus ring. The automatic reversal can be prevented by un-checking the box at Options > Preferences > Alignment > "Automatic order".

The main effect of starting at one end versus the other is to change the framing. Framing is always determined by the first frame processed. If you override the default and start at the wide end, then you're very likely to get "streaky" edges that are due to filling in otherwise missing pixels around the outsides of narrower frames that had to be shrunk to keep the subject aligned.

Aside from alignment and brightness adjustment, order doesn't have much effect on the stacking per se. In particular the current software does not have a concept of "in front of" that would decide what to show in cases of overlap.

--Rik

[TheLostVertex]

Thanks for the response Rik. For some reason I thought it might have a "in front of" type operation for dmap. I guess when automatic order is on it will align the frames and then start with the one that has been scaled down the most, if I understand correctly.

Thanks for looking guys
-Steve

[tpe]

Those look like very good results, you have definatly extracted the great detail from the stack and the equipment used.

Tim