Honey bee, face in profile

Optical microscopes + digital photography
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Guest

Honey bee, face in profile

Post by Guest »

This is an example of an image that would be nearly impossible without a program like Helicon Focus. One thing that amazes me it the fact that there were fifty (50) 18 meg pictures (3072x2048 pixels) in the stack, and it only took somewhare between 2 to 3 minutes to combine the images.
... Charles Krebs
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Honey bee head profile
Honey bee head profile
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Dan Kozub
Posts: 355
Joined: 24.03.2004 18:14

Post by Dan Kozub »

Charles,

Great shot, as always! I didn't know there are hairy eyes on our planet :)

How did you managed to shot 50 images? it makes about 1Gb!! The whole storage card?

Which aperture did you used? why so many frames? I thought with such magnification (10x?) some 10-15 frames would be enough.

Danylo
Charles Krebs
Posts: 38
Joined: 06.04.2005 08:00
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Post by Charles Krebs »

Danylo... at this point I'm still experimenting to see what works best, but it probably was "overkill" to use fifty :wink:. Just for fun, I ran the stack using every other image and then again using every third image. If I scrolled around the final output at 100% I could find pieces that looked slightly better when using all fifty, but for web size images nobody would ever see it. In a large print... maybe, but it would have to be a side by side comparison.

I've found that with a very low power microscope objective it can be tough to determine where the DOF "overlaps" are. So I would rather take too many than too few. Based on what I have seen using this stack I probably would not want to do it with less than about 20 images.

This objective has a na of 0.08, so in f-stop terms it's probably somewhere between f5.6 and f8.
Micky Phillips

D70 helicon stacking

Post by Micky Phillips »

Charles and Danylo,

I am a forensic entomology master's student in the USA--I considered purchasing automontage software thinking it was the only product available to address my needs.

I have a D70 with a macro lens mounted to a meiji stereoscope with a coupler. It is trinocular.

I have been contracted to do some close-ups of blowflies...quite similar to the honeybee photo. I need to count hairs, basically.

I need assistance with setting up my camera, the scope and my fiber optic lighting to achieve the best results.

I have not downloaded any product as of yet...I am seeking advice, help and a working relationship with other professionals who can share info.

Micky Phillips
toetagdoc@aol.com
mphillips@cityschools.com

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Dan Kozub
Posts: 355
Joined: 24.03.2004 18:14

Post by Dan Kozub »

Micky,

I think you'd better just install the program and try it yourself.
Is pretty easy, both shooting and stacking.
The important point is to set manual mode for exposure and focusing.
You will find the workflow of advanced users in this forum, such as Charles Krebs or Peter Borshberg and others.

I will help you with the program itself, if you need my assistance.


Danylo
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