[onefivenine]

Shot quite a few bugs yesterday, before a night-shift in work. Just got home and tried a quick stack. Not the best - still not got a focus rail - but thought I'd share it as these critters aren't often seen eating according to my learned macro pal.

Red Spider Mite (appx 1mm body length)

ISO100, f/6.3, 1/250, 65mm, 5:1 magnification, 3 shot stack

[johnaalex]

Impressive stuff Dave. I have not much of an understanding of this technique. How much time is there between each shot?

[jomike]

Nice stuff Dave

As a matter of interest, why f6.3 and not higher for max DOF? I assume you used flash so light should not be a problem.

Mike

[onefivenine]

Originally Posted by johnaalex

Impressive stuff Dave. I have not much of an understanding of this technique. How much time is there between each shot?

Thanks John. Just a split second between shots - long enough for me to move the lens a minute amount each time.

Originally Posted by jomike

Nice stuff Dave

As a matter of interest, why f6.3 and not higher for max DOF? I assume you used flash so light should not be a problem.

Mike

Cheers Mike.

Two reasons really.

1) The lens doesn't transmit magnification data for the image Exif... so to help me remember what magnification the MP-E was at for any shot I always shoot at:-
Magnification - Aperture
1x - f/11
2x - f/9
3x - f/8
4x - f/7.1
5x - f/6.3

2) More importantly, diffraction softness at higher magnifications means that you have to increase the aperture (lower f-number) at higher magnification to maintain sharpness.

I think this is due to the 'effective aperture' also, where

Effective f-number = f-number x (Magnification+1)

So f/16 on the dial at 5x magnification has an efffective aperture of f/96

Sounds great but the total DOF at f/16 and 5x mag is still only 0.269mm (which decreases to 0.048mm at f/2.8 and 5x).

My f/6.3 @ 5x is more like f/36 in terms of light loss. This is another reason why the lighting in macro is so crucial and the MT24-EX is such a god-send, not only to help see the subject with the focus lamps, but also to freeze it if I need to reduce the Tv to eg 1/30 at ISO400 to expose for the background.

[Tobers]

Nice one. Lots of detail - I know how hard focus stacking can be.

That's not your carpet is it?

[onefivenine]

Originally Posted by Tobers

That's not your carpet is it?

Ha ha!

No, the background is lichens and moss on a red-brick wall.

[dancingmatt]

Focus stacking is where you blend photos taken at different focus lengths, right? How can you say this is 5:1? And did you use a tripod - I'm just astonished it didn't move in between shots!

[onefivenine]

Originally Posted by dancingmatt

Focus stacking is where you blend photos taken at different focus lengths, right? How can you say this is 5:1? And did you use a tripod - I'm just astonished it didn't move in between shots!

Yes, this is 3 shots with slightly different focus points combined using CombineZM.
It was taken at the 5:1 focus point on the MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro lens.
No tripod, taken handheld resting the end of the lens on the wall it was sitting on.
. These things are usually scurrying around but this one was feeding so going nowhere for a while.

[tontoshorse]

Thats clever stuff and produces excellent results. I have trouble remembering what iso I have.

[onefivenine]

Thanks TH.

It's not a great stack TBH. I still haven't done one that I'm happy with. You can clearly see a gap between the focussed areas near the bottom of the image, a thin slice which is out of focus, just a few hundreds of a millimetre but enough to be annoying.