orchid

[DanK]

I hadn't done any orchids in quite a while, but someone gave us this one as a holiday present, and I thought I would play a bit.

100mm macro, 20mm tube, 38 images stacked in Zerene PMax.

C&C welcome, as always.

[FrankMi]

Well done Dan! Quite pleasing to view.

[chauncey]

Very nice Dan for getting that close...were you to show some background, what color would you opt for?

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[rudi]

This stack came out very nice Dan.

[Stagecoach]

Good one Dan, to get in close seems to work well with orchids.

[JBW]

can you explain the benefits/drawbacks of stacking?

[IzzieK]

Very beautiful, Dan...how big are the flowers?

[DanK]

Thanks, everyone. Izzie: the entire image (it's not cropped at all) is perhaps 28mm across. The sensor (FF) is 36mm across, and this setup gets over 1:1 magnification. Brian, the point of stacking is to obtain more depth of field. The higher the magnification in macro, the smaller the DOF. Up to a point (not up to this point), you can compensate by using a very small aperture, but that will decrease the sharpness of the image. I usually use 3-20 images for flowers, depending on how deep they are. Chauncey--I almost always go for a pure black background. I know that it isn't original, but it doesn't distract. I have seen some beautiful shots with white and off-white backgrounds, but so far, my attempts to use white haven't been very good.

[IzzieK]

You did not answer my question...how big is the flower? Your image is 28mm across and you are using a FF camera.

[DanK]

You did not answer my question...how big is the flower? Your image is 28mm across and you are using a FF camera.

I assumed that what you wanted was the size of the portion captured by the camera, since the rest of the flower could be any size, with no relevance to the image. I added the information about the sensor size because I thought it might be a useful concrete illustration of magnification in macro work, which has been the subject of a lot of earlier discussion.

The size of the entire flower is roughly 7 cm.

[IzzieK]

I assumed that what you wanted was the size of the portion captured by the camera, since the rest of the flower could be any size, with no relevance to the image. I added the information about the sensor size because I thought it might be a useful concrete illustration of magnification in macro work, which has been the subject of a lot of earlier discussion.

The size of the entire flower is roughly 7 cm.

Thank you. I am not much into flower photography. I just grow them, with great success if I may say so myself...but photographing them is another territory in my book but I want to learn things like does it matter? (you've answered that one...) or how close can you get, etc. -- I have a pretty good idea on some stuffs about photography. I just need to put it into practice, keeping my fingers crossed, with a D810 without giving me any problem on my wrist and letting be stay on my tripod like the D800e which heaviness I relegated to my food photography stuff. I will keep my D300s as a second body just in case and dispose the rest.

[DanK]

I just need to put it into practice, keeping my fingers crossed, with a D810 without giving me any problem on my wrist and letting be stay on my tripod like the D800e which heaviness I relegated to my food photography stuff. I will keep my D300s as a second body just in case

Izzie,

The honest answer is that for this type of photography, unless you intend to print large, it won't make much difference which of those bodies you use. The lighting and exposure are controlled, so there is no need for the better high-ISO performance of FF cameras. Most of the flowers on my website were taken with a Canon 50D, a 15 MP crop sensor camera that I think is roughly the same generation as your D300. (I don't shoot Nikon, so I am not sure.) A few, like the one I will post below, were taken with an old Rebel XTi, a 10MP plastic camera that was at the time the second-cheapest Canon DSLR and that is well below current standards. Also, almost any dedicated macro lens will provide sufficient quality. The barriers to this sort of photography are technical (e.g., the limited DOF; lighting, etc.).

Dan

Canon XTi, EF-S 60mm macro, ambient lighting from a window:

[Downrigger]

All of this very nice, very interesting, Dan. You're definitely pushing me towards exploring this terrain with your great images and helpful advice. Especially since the soggy brown phase of winter is lasting overlong here.

[ashcroft]

Both are excellent, Dan. You have some very nice images on your website too. Did you know you can turn off the Smug footer at the bottom of the page, it's here http://help.smugmug.com/customer/por...er-and-footer-

[FrankMi]

can you explain the benefits/drawbacks of stacking?

Hi Brian, as Dan points out the benefit of stacking is that you can control, in minute detail if needed, the image DoF. Well beyond the limited range of depth of this flower, you can bring almost any part of an image into sharp focus and selectively decide where you want the focus to drop off (if at all). It can be used, for example, to being objects a few centimeters from the lens all the way out to infinity into sharp focus in a single image.

But the drawbacks!!

Focus stacking can be a LOT of work. You need to control the focus point of multiple images, typically anywhere from a few (for landscapes) to sometimes well over a hundred. How many depends on the DoF of the lens at the selected focal length times the desired DoF for the entire subject.

Then you can't align multiple images if the subject and camera moves even the smallest amount so static subjects and a tripod are usually required.

Then all of the images need to be perfectly aligned. Once aligned, usually you would need specialized software to select only the sharpest pixels from each image to be merged into the composite result. Even then there are 'artifacts' that need to be addressed, typically where the fuzzy edge of the closer object partially masks out the sharper elements of objects further back in the stack.

On the other hand, it can give a lot of pleasure to be able to partially get around one of the camera's most annoying limitations (a single focal plane with its DoF limitation) and finally see the subject detail more like your eyes actually view it!

[DanK]

Mark, that's one reason I do it.

Rob, re Smugmug: thanks on both counts.

Frank, I think you are being a little too discouraging. Yes, stacking is hard. You do need to be very careful about movement, which is one reason I almost never stack handheld shots. I am too much of a klutz. However, there are lots of people who do stack handheld or monopod-supported shots. In the case of flowers like this, I do them inside with a tripod.

However, you almost never need 100 shots. The most I have ever stacked is the 38 in this image, and that is in my experience unusual. I think my previous max was in the 20s, and usually it is between 3 and 20. So, you need some patience to take the photos.

Once you have them, however, it can be quite easy, depending on the images. The image I posted here was a simple one; it worked better with the faster Zerene algorithm (PMax), and it needed no touching up. All I had to do is this:

1. Batch export the images from the raw files in Lightroom, using the Zerene plugin. Doing it that way automatically executes Zerene and loads the images.

2. Select 'Stack all_PMax.

3. Wait about 3 minutes for the computer to do all of the calculations.

4. Save the output image.

5. Synch the LR folder to import the stacked image.

6. Edit to taste.

You don't always get artifacts. The most common artifact arises when there is a large distance front to back between an edge and the surface behind it. This can create halos. Zerene has tools for getting rid of them, but it can take a fair amount of work. This particular image had no artifacts big enough to worry about. I did no cleanup of the stack at all.

Sometimes you get artifacts, however, and then it can become a lot more work.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

So the plugin is doing the stacking via the algorithm figuring out which pixels are actually sharpest?
Sorry, I'm really ignorant about PP but find this very interesting.

[FrankMi]

So the plugin is doing the stacking via the algorithm figuring out which pixels are actually sharpest?
Sorry, I'm really ignorant about PP but find this very interesting.

Yup! So to speak Alan.

The algorithms aren't looking at a single pixel but rather groups of pixels. The larger the difference in brightness (and to some degree, color) in adjacent pixels, the more pronounced the division between the pixels is and the sharper that difference appears.

The algorithm looks for the parts of each image in the stack that has the highest difference between adjacent pixels and selects those groups of pixels. When this has been done for all areas if the images in the stack, then the sharpest sets of pixels are displayed in the resulting composite image.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

So you change the focus of each shot just a little and walk the focus point out/into the flower as you go...I think I'll just stick to being happy with what I get out of my old micro 55 for now.
Thanks for the explanation though, it is appreciated.