Automated Stack and Stitch Rig

Have questions about the equipment used for macro- or micro- photography? Post those questions in this forum.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

mjkzz
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Automated Stack and Stitch Rig

Post by mjkzz »

Listened to Chris and Mike, anodized T-slot board, very expensive, more than the boards themselves, but darn it looks good. Unfortunately, forgot to send in those joint plates, guess have to paint them.

All hardware are done, including electronics. This rig gives me 80mmx80mm across plane perpendicular to the stacking axis with 90mm travel. This should be enough for most bugs including butterflies. Sure there will be bigger one, but hey, it is good for me for NOW.

A -- Z axis
B -- X axis
C -- camera with 3x telecentric lens from Nikkor el-50
D -- high precision stacking rail

Open to suggestions as what are essential features for stack and stitch. Of course, other features are welcome, too.

Image

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

I'm wondering about the mechanical distance and springiness between camera and subject :-k

Image
Chris R

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

Peter,

That is just beautiful!! Doubt the clamps will add any serious reflection, and they look great in natural color against the black. The black anodizing really looks nice and expensive too!!

Chris has a good point, that is a long way. The natural frequency will be very low and require a long settling time.

BTW what are you controlling the subject rails with? Seems that might get complicated rather than just a manual positioner.

Best,

Mike

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

Thanks Chris, I will test it. At low magnification, I have a feeling it might not be so bad. Of course, tests, tests for that particular setup.

Mike, agree, but I do like things to be connected, it is possible to disconnect the XZ rails and have them mounted on a heavy solid metal "wall".

My controllers are addressable and can be put on a data bus with up to 32 units (theoretical), so controlling 4 (XYZR) motors is not a difficult task. Of course, I need to modify it to accept RJ45 cables. I have the specs on my website that you can download (it is OPEN spec, but not OPEN source).

Regards
Peter

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

OK, did a quick test (one and half hours, just to acquire 728 images), it seems to work. It was definitely a thrilling experience to do this the first time.

[edit]forgot to mention, the reason it is only half of the butterfly is all batteries were dying -- I was using batteries for motors, too. Camera battery started flashing after about 650 images. Any ideas to get some kind of adapter to use outlet? thanks. [/edit]

Each image is stacked with no alignment (all options turned off). I noticed that there were some mismatch between no alignment and with full alignment before, so I turned all off just in case stitching software can not handle those mismatches. Will try with all options turned on.

Horizontal overlap is about 20%, vertical is about 50%, the vertical overlap is due to my mistake, should have been 20%. I think it will work with 10% overlap in each dimension.

I used Microsoft ICE to stitch all together and it was quick stitch. After stitching, I noticed some shifts (see red arrow), this is probably due to my X axis rail is not perfect level.

The final image is 27980x10557 pixels, or roughly 0.295 gigapixels. You can download this image here

Image

Charles Krebs
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Camera battery started flashing after about 650 images. Any ideas to get some kind of adapter to use outlet? thanks.
The official Canon AC adapter for the pictured camera is the "ACK-E8" (about $70). They seem pretty expensive for what they are. If you search Ebay for "ACK-E8" you will find plenty of inexpensive third party offerings. (I've used some of these with no problems, but some others have had some concerns. There was a thread about this not too long ago but I can't find it.)

Saul
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Post by Saul »

Charles Krebs wrote:
Camera battery started flashing after about 650 images. Any ideas to get some kind of adapter to use outlet? thanks.
The official Canon AC adapter for the pictured camera is the "ACK-E8" (about $70). They seem pretty expensive for what they are. If you search Ebay for "ACK-E8" you will find plenty of inexpensive third party offerings. (I've used some of these with no problems, but some others have had some concerns. There was a thread about this not too long ago but I can't find it.)
This one ?
http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... wer+supply
Saul
μ-stuff

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

There's a discussion here of external flash battery packs:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... ck+yongnuo

There are also external generic power supplies for cameras, discussed here:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 7&start=90

I just converted all my stuff to use these power supplies. I love the Tether Tools camera power supply, which can run off AC or off an external USB-charged large-capacity battery. The flash external battery packs vary in quality and I am not so confident about mine. An AC supply might be better but these battery packs (which extend life x3) are really cheap.

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

Thanks Charles, I will get one, probably not a Canon official one as the building (with full of camera shops) might not carry one. My Canon 550D is close to dead, so I will risk it with a third party one.

Thanks Saul, like I said, I will risk it :-)

Lou, I am using continuous light and later I will switch to studio strobes as I do not have light tent built around the setup yet.



Regards
Peter

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

I bet Tether Tools has an AC power supply for your camera.

lolhonk
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Post by lolhonk »

Wow what a nice setup! I love that black color :DD

Can you explain me what a 3x telecentric lens is, please?

best,

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

@lolhonk, if you search "telecentric" on this forum, you will see there are many discussion on this and some of them were written TEN years ago by Rik and others.

For external reference, here is a useful link:

http://www.edmundoptics.com.au/resource ... entricity/

Regards
Peter

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

Not having that battery adapter for my 550D, I just have to reduce the magnification to 2x so that I can use less number of images for the stacking axis, to reduce total number of images down to less than 600.

Here is one, it is 12245 x 7885 or little under 100m pixels. Full image in TIFF format is here

Could have restacked the head part to get both antenna in. It was so easy to move the subject (relative to camera) around.

Image

Part of the image . . .
Image

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

One thing seems to be sure that at low magnification, the system seems stable enough, I will try higher magnification once the adapter arrives.

mjkzz
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Post by mjkzz »

My camera adapter arrived today, but before it did, I stacked and stitched this one, final size is 18851x6874 pixels. Full image in TIFF can be downloaded here

Again, system seems to be stable at low magnification (this one is 2x). Now the adapter is here, I will try 3x or 5x.

Image

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