Aside from its impressive eyes, this Snipe Fly had stiking silver and black bands along its abdomen - click on the image for a larger view:
Ornate Snipe Fly, Chrysopilus ornatus
I would tentatively identify this as an Ornate Snipe Fly, Chrysopilus ornatus. About 3.5x clifesized, 162 stacked exposures. Pentax K-3 with DFA 50mm macro reverse mounted on extension.
An Ermine Moth (family Yponomeutidae). These moths get their name from their resemblance of their white fur to ermine, the white fur worn by aristocrats. Ermine is the winter fur of a stoat, which is a kind of weasel.
I really wanted to get more detail in the eyes, but they seem to just drink up all of the light that shines into them.
A beetle, perhaps a longhorn beetle (family Cerambycidae), taken at about 4x lifesized. Click on the image for a larger / more detailed view.
I tried a different technique with this image. Instead of making a single pass at the subject, trying to take a hundred or more exposures to be stacked together, I took a more relaxed approach and took only 20 to 40 photos in any single pass, but took five passes at the subject. I then stacked each of those 5 passes in Zerene stacker, using the two methodologies that it supports. That gave me 10 output image which were tan stacked together in Photoshop. All in all, 140 images total were combined, though through 5 intermediary stacks.
My thought was that with the basic, manually controlled focus stacking rail that I use, I could never successfully get enough overlapping images without missing some areas - and gaps between exposures have been a recurring problem in recent images. By taking multiple low sample passes at the subject I am basically betting that the out of focus areas won't land in the same place on all of the images, and by taking 5 images like this it pretty much assures that any point on the subject will be sharp in at least one exposure.
It seems to have worked! I'll be trying more with this in the future.
Basic info - made with Pentax K-3 and DFA 50mm f2.8 macro reverse mounted on extension for approximate magnification of 4x lifesized.
Visiting the Allegan Forest a few days ago, I stumbled into a section that apparently was subject to a prescribed burn sometime in the past few weeks. (I'm guess it was a controlled burn since several were conduncted in the spring and it is confined to a precrise area.)
Some interesting scenes of the trees, especially along the edge between the burned woods and the green woods not subject to the fire. Click on the images for larger views:
Since first embracing studio stacked macro photos a few months ago, I've been working on technique and also trying to explore avenues to get to higher magnifications. So today's test is of the Otamat 10mm f1.7 microfiche reader lens. A few days ago I posted on tests with the Otamat 20mm f1.7 lens, including an image taken at 5.5x lifesized. For this exercise, I used the shorter lens (which of course means greater magnification on extension) and tried to push up to 8x lifesize.
Here is a portrait of a wasp (I think it is a Braconid Wasp) taken with the 10mm lens mounted on a pair of short extension tubes:
Braconid Wasp
This photo has some obvious flaws, but its a big step forward from my few past attempts at this level of magnification, so I'll take encouragement from that.
Here's the full subject mounted on a pin with crazy glue (click on the iamge for a larger view):
One interesting note - this stack was compiled in Photoshop CS6, not Zerene stacker. I initially stacked these images in ZS but was not satisfied with the results - lots of wierd artifacts in some areas of the image - and so I reverted to Photoshop. It did take many hours to stack just 50 images but the results were worthwhile.
Earlier this spring I kept an eye on some tiny flowers that grew up in the cracks between bricks near my house. The flowers were at the end of fairly long stems, and when they opened were just a few millimeters in size. However, they were pretty uninteresting and did not look like a good macro subject, so I passed them by. A few days ago I took another look, and found that the now fading plants with tiny seed pods where each flower had been. The empty seed pods had an interesting shape... Here's a photo of one (click on the image for a larger view):
Seed Pod
This particular pod was 5mm in dimension, the image was taken at approximately 3x lifesized with a 50mm macro lens reverse mounted on extension. Thirty nine stacked images.
A few days ago I tried some systematic (for me, at least) experiments with higher magnification macro photos. In the past few months I've gotten more comfortable with stacking images up to 3.5x to 4x lifesized. I'd like to increment that to the 5x to 6x range.
My most used lens - a 50mm - becomes somewhat unwieldy at those magnifications due to the amount of extension needed. While I have routinely photographed snowflakes at magnifications of 5x to 10x using a reverse mounted 50mm lens, in that case the camera is mounted in a straight vertical position and little stacking is used. For insects and plants, I've been mounting the camera horizontally and combining several dozen sacked images - all of which is difficult with extensive bellows and extension tube setups.
Here's the output from one experiment using an Otamat lens, a 20mm f1.7 on two medium extension tubes. Magnification was about 5.5x (click on the image for a larger view):
Test of Otamat 20mm f1.7
This is a 70 image stack. The stack was processed in Zerene Stacker, using both DMap and Pmax processes. The two output files were stacked in Photoshop PS 6. The original 70 exposures were also processed in Photoshop Camera Raw prior to being combined in Zerene Stacker. The image was taken in horizonal orientation and cropped to a square format.
Here are a couple of photos of the setup using the Otamat lens:
The led ring light is used only as an aid to focus - the amount of light it puts out is inconsequential to the exposure. A pair of flashes is used to obtain accurate exposure.
I have not found the Otamat lenses that I bought a few years ago to be as useful as I had hoped they would, but I am favorably impressed (and somewhat surprised) at its performance in this test. I should note that the images taken with the Otamat were extremely low contrast and I would up making some pretty notable adjustments to the images when preparing the raw files. The system with the Otamat lens was fairly easy to work with, being light and compact.
I plan to continue to experiment with this lens, and also with the Otamat 10mm f1.7 (I bought both of these a year or so ago, but have done little with them since.) A quick summation of the pros and cons of the 20mm lens: Pros - very good detail in a setup that is much more compact and stable than an SLR lens reverse mounted on extension. Cons - lacking in contrast and color saturaton (though this can be corrected in post exposure processing.
Since this is tagged as a review: I have no connection to Otamat or whatever company manufactures and distributes these lenses.
This colorful moth is an Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea). These are becoming more and more common in Michigan, though from what I read they cannot survive our winters and so migrate north in the spring. I found this specimen on the wall of my garage a few days ago:
Ailanthus Webworm Moth (Atteva aurea)
Sixty-six stacked images, made with a Pentax K-3 and reverse mounted DFA 50mm macro lens on about on extension tubes. Magnification is about 3.5x lifesized.