Everytime I see these posts I keep thinking that slabbing should be native to ZS to take advantage of the prealignment etc. Nothing complicated - just have an option screen that is laid out in two columns / passes Pass 1: - slab y/n - number of slabs - overlap slab to slab - stack method and options...

I've been playing with a couple of different approaches to see which is quicker but right now I favour reading back the image thumbnail from disk and calculate average pixel values - advantage is that it confirms "write" to disk and is quite quick to read back as the thumbnail is already small (120x...

Windows based timers are not always very accurate in the millisecond range. I tend to use them for large intervals such as post move (time to settle after a stage movement) or post shoot (time to transfer an image). There is also sometimes delays on the camera side in lifting mirrors and opening shu...

... AndrewC, I would be interested to hear more about how you are controlling your flash through ttl. Rather simple - Nikon TTL strobes have two command lines - a fire and a quench. Pulling them to ground triggers and then quenches the flash. Very simple to do with a microcontroller of your choice ...

The other thing you can do is use two or more flashes for illumination bounced of diffuse reflectors. Any variation from one shot to another due to the flash control circuitry then gets balanced out a little. The other option, which may or may not be practical for you, is to manually control the fla...

Try using FastPictureViewer for ingesting and monitoring frames as they are shot.

Hi Paul, That's what I used to do - pass off commands through CMN and it is a great package. But, CMN is just accessing the Nikon MAID so why not go direct ? It's only taken me a few hours to get the initial handshaking, image capture and a liveview box set up (albeit with more than a little help fr...

Did you shoot them with flash or continuous light ? Just wondering if being zapped would wake them up again

Andrew

For anyone interested, a helpful and skilful gentleman by the name of Thomas Dideriksen has written a wrapper for the MAID Nikon SDK to make it easier to implement by neophytes like myself.

https://sourceforge.net/p/nikoncswrapper/wiki/Home/

They are pretty standard features that people build into this kind of software, for those who like playing with it ! I've never thought to check image histogram to detect flash exposure but instead just use a photodiode to detect that the flash output is staying constant through a stack. In my own s...

Have you tried using the free autodesk123d catch to convert your crystals into 3D objects ? I've tried with insects but ithey are just too complicated for this level of software. I've had a pet project for a while to render stacked insect images onto a wireframe but it is just a bit beyond my resour...

Chris S. wrote: Andrew, we need to be careful what we wish for, don't we? As I recall, it was you who encouraged me to come out of the dark about goniometers. ...

This is a question I'd like to expand and publicly ask of the more experienced goniometer users. Does the degree of apparent , usable shift increase at higher magnifications? I need to think about this some more but wanted to introduce it into this discussion... Craig Not sure I fully understand th...

One other consideration is whether or not you want to use autoalignment when stacking the images - when moving the camera on a rigid slide you can often turn it off as the camera will by definition be advancing along the optical axis. If you move the subject it might be travelling at an angle to the...

The Sandia Crest behind Albuquerque is a great place to watch the sunset over the desert. You can drive up or take a cable car. White Sands is well worth visiting. Tent Rocks is some interesting geology close to Santa Fe. Valley Of Fires Recreation Area near Carrizozo is nice. It is worth hunting ou...