Here are two photographs that I made of a starfish from the coast of Maine.
I realize that the focus on neither picture is great, but still the pictures are somewhat pretty, I think.
Instead of drawing scale bars, I wanted to show off my new rulers that throw off much less glare than the shiny plastic one that I had been using. In a posting on another topic, a member whose user name is waltknapp told me (and all of us) about a company that sells such rulers. They are very handy, and I am grateful for Walt's informing me of this product.
Incidentally, I am wondering if I oversharpened these photos just a tad much.
I just glanced at these yesterday, didn't think very hard about them.
The starfish is smaller than I would have expected. I'm used to the Pacific Coast beaches, where an orange starfish is likely to be 30 cm across. This one is only 6 cm. I'm sure that ours come smaller, but it's the big ones that draw attention. Because of my experience, having something for scale in this picture is very helpful.
I did notice, though, that it took me quite a lot of conscious effort to work through the numbers -- "Let's see, this scale must be cm because I know this poster has written about cm scales, so then I'll count off the cm, or subtract 5 from 11..." and so on. In this particular case, I would have gotten a more immediate impression from some familiar object in the scene. As I'm writing this, I just had a vision of the starfish sitting in the palm of a hand, then on top of a can of baked beans. Both are definitely less precise than a scale, but perhaps more intuitive. It's hard to know.
Sometimes it helps to try several possibilities and see what works best over the long term. Getting other people's reactions is also helpful. Of course you can use us here at photomacrography.net for that. It can also be helpful to talk with other people around the house or workplace who are interested but not intimate with what you're doing. Show them several options and see what works best for them. It might also be helpful to make friends with one of your local art instructors or graphic artists. Even if they don't do scientific illustration themselves, chances are good that they had a course in it at some point and can relate to what you're trying to do.
About the sharpening, yes, this does appear to be overdone. There's a general stark impression that doesn't match my memory of starfish. Analyzing the image, one thing I notice is that there's a distinct narrow dark band of background all around the subject. It's possible that this is due to lighting, but it's also the sort of halo artifact that comes from sharpening with a filter that's several pixels wide. Overall, the strongest clue may be that you asked. In my experience, when someone new to sharpening asks if it's overdone, it's overdone.
IMO, the best use of sharpening is to restore the visual impression of the original subject, which otherwise tends to get softer in reproduction. If in doubt, haul out the specimen and set it next to the screen. If the screen looks stark compared to the real subject, then it's been processed too much.
By the way, since you're very interested in scale, I took the time to look closer at these. Taking a direct measurement from the ruler in the first picture, the maximum width of the starfish measures 7.1 cm. But the same measurement using the ruler and starfish in the second picture gets only 6.5 cm. I presume this is because the ruler in one or both pictures is a different distance from the lens than are the two arms that I'm measuring. Whatever the reason, the two measurements of the same feature are about 9% different. I have no idea whether this difference matters for your purposes, but thought you'd like to know about it.
I appreciate your excellent observations, as always.
First, you are right about having to do some work with the ruler. The best thing would be to use a scale bar, and I have now learned quite a bit from you on producing one. And if I am not going to make a scale bar, then placing some object of known size into the picture would be the next best thing. I think that I used the rulers in this one case because I really wanted to try them in a photograph at least once. If I do need them at some point, they actually do throw off much less glare, which is quite helpful.
Second, yes in one photo the ruler is several millimeters above the surface, as I noted in the text on the photograph, and in the other photo the ruler is right on the surface. This surely would account for the different measurement, again as you have explained to me.
Finally, thank you for your evaluation of the (over)sharpening. I really have a hard time knowing how far to push it. People and tutorials I read keep talking about halos, and sometimes I see what they are saying but often I don't. I guess that, when feasible, I should do as you suggest and hold out the specimen next to the screen. Sometimes, of course, that cannot be done.
Using the unsharp mask is causing me a bit of vexation. When used properly, it really does help the picture. But it can be overused, as I am learning.
I hope that this is an appropriate posting in this forum. I think that it is OK.
I have now been introduced to the idea of doing some of my work in monochrome, so I wanted to pursue that a little bit. My photographic equipment is so primitive that I may as well expand into that realm to some extent.
So I have now used Photoshop Elements to convert my starfish pictures to sepia toning. For those interested, I used the Hue/Saturation dialog, I colorized, then I set both hue and saturation to 30.
Artistically, the color shot may or may not be better than the sepia. It depends upon the colors, I suppose. From a scientific point of view, however, I imagine that it is always better to use color. The more information the better, right? The only reason I can think of, for scientific purposes, to use monochrome instead of color would be if, by using only black-and-white, a person happens to be able to observe something that would otherwise be overlooked.
I quite like that actually. The tone suits the environment in which they're often found,sandy beaches! I do think there's room for more artistic,less prosaic interpretations of the objects we come upon in our daily lives. However this would work so much better without the ruler at the bottom as in this context its a non technical approach.
Canon 5D and 30D | Canon IXUS 265HS | Cosina 100mm f3.5 macro | EF 75-300 f4.5-5.6 USM III | EF 50 f1.8 II | Slik 88 tripod | Apex Practicioner monocular microscope
Stanley wrote:The only reason I can think of, for scientific purposes, to use monochrome instead of color would be if, by using only black-and-white, a person happens to be able to observe something that would otherwise be overlooked.
There are also more pedestrian reasons for using monochrome. Many scientific journals are still printed only as B/W halftones, or have page charges for color. For example my pictures of the yucca moth were reproduced as B/W halftones, in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
Yes, you are correct about the ruler. In this context, the scale may not make much sense.
But I guess that I am just too rigid about these things. It really bothers me when I see something, whose scale I would not know, not have some kind of information in this regards. For example, Rik and maybe others were surprised at how small this starfish was.
I guess that, for these pictures, what I should do is similar to what Rik suggests. For example, I could put a coin next to the starfish. That way we would at least get a general idea about the size of the subject.
Stanley wrote:For example, I could put a coin next to the starfish. That way we would at least get a general idea about the size of the subject.
Coins are good, especially for people who use the same currency. And maybe medium-sized coins are about the same worldwide.
But just to be safe, I think it's good to also include some text that tells the size of the coin. For illustration see these frost spikes, image #2 and the text that goes with it. Dimes are of course unusually small, so anybody who is not familiar with them would guess wrong.
In contrast, for this tree stump I named the coin but did not give its diameter. That seemed fine when I did it, but now a year later I wish I had said what the diameter of a U.S. quarter is. In fact I wish it so much, I just now felt compelled to go back and put that in!
