Rik, could you give a little suggest to spot better the differences ? I don't have much to add, beyond what you've written. I am glad to see "simplified base idea" in the description of contrast weighting. There are a lot of possibilities at that stage, notably using weighting functions that are no...

Welcome to the forum! These test shots look fine for sharpness. Both lenses have good reputations and both appear to be in good condition. I see no trace of motion blur. At effective f/25 on 43 megapixel fullframe, you are stopped down as far as you possibly can be, without losing detail to diffract...

The color balance and contrast of the second image are much different from the first. The second image looks very dark and washed out. If your camera provides manual control over exposure and color balance, then I suggest to set those from a gray card at the subject's position, with the plastic plat...

Very nice! The original image is 50,000 x 30,000px Thinking of this image in terms of a print, those dimensions translate to 13.9 x 8.3 feet, at 300 pixels per inch. So, as custom wallpaper, that would fill a good-sized "feature wall" at a resolution that would look tack sharp standing close with re...

More great info and images -- keep 'em coming!

For me the inverted stamp was momentarily concave, but it popped convex within a couple of seconds and now it is stubbornly stuck there, with the light coming from the bottom.

--Rik

Fred, welcome aboard! That's an excellent snowflake image.

I watched a bit of one hockey video. If your grandsons can hang with those guys, they skate waaay better than I ever could.

--Rik

Same subject, same microscope, but now with polarizers in place. Isn't it remarkeble how much less details are visible? That's a dramatic comparison. If the polarizers are crossed, then I expect what we've lost is all the one-bounce specular reflections/refractions from the surface of the subject, ...

That looks exactly like the mechanism used by bee & wasp stingers to penetrate hide. It may be the same anatomy, just tweaked a little.

--Rik

No need to know the algorithms. Just stack the same image with Zerene and Photoshop. I'll guarantee the Zerene image will have fewer artifacts :D Maybe Rik will explain this - I have better luck with PS stacking transparent crystals. Simple -- I disagree with elf. What I would guarantee is that PS ...

What a rich subject!

For me, the inverted one appeared concave for a moment, then it snapped to convex and now stubbornly stays there.

--Rik

Troels, good catch!

The Jansjö lamps that I use are the old ones that are AC powered. I have no experience with the USB versions.

--Rik

JSkory wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 02, 2021 6:45 pm

So when you said you had to use cross polarization to cut down on reflection did you use a filter in front of the light?

Yes. There's a photo of the setup shown later in the thread, at viewtopic.php?p=234913#p234913 .

--Rik

So, a day later, I am now stuck in the "correct" perception. Try as I might, I cannot consciously flip between convex/concave by imagining different illumination. Instead my perception remains stuck in convex, with the inferred angle for illumination forced to either top or bottom to match the subje...

Why are the Janso lights so popular with you guys? Do you use them for something other than main lighting? I often use Jansjö lights for main illumination, usually with paper for diffusion and usually with custom color balance off a white card. The ones that I have are not terribly far off my camer...

The following image represents the winning thread for the February 2021 award for Macro. It was originally posted at https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42939 (image #1 of that thread). We're reproducing the image here, separately, as part of our procedure to provide clarity when ...