Butterfly scales

JH · Post by JH » Tue Feb 18, 2020 7:37 am

Peacock butterfly (Aglais io). Nikon ELWD plan fluor 20x

Cranberry blue (Agriades optilete). Nikon BD M plan apo 40x

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:32 pm

Jorgen, as we are learning that tube lenses are so important, I am always curious about the tube lenses that people use. Was it your large-format process lens?

grgh · Post by **grgh** » Tue Feb 18, 2020 4:29 pm

Love the lighting on those first two shots, very special.

JH · Post by JH » Wed Feb 19, 2020 2:22 am

Thanks for the comments!

grgh wrote:Love the lighting on those first two shots, very special.

The first two pictures are part of a stack and stich. I did not want the light to change between the pictures, so I used cross polarized epi light. This type of light is practically shadow less. I stacked it with Zerene Stacker PMax. With PMax I have found that I usually must increase saturation a little in post processing. This is usually not needed with DMap.

Lou Jost wrote:Jorgen, as we are learning that tube lenses are so important, I am always curious about the tube lenses that people use. Was it your large-format process lens?

For the first pictures I used an ITL 200. The ITL is inside a head rising tube (50 mm) on a Nikon Optiphot microscope. Here is a picture with the head rising tube above the epi light.
https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... 799#192799

Using the head rising tube in this way is convenient because I can look through the microscope, usually with an objective lens with less enlargement to find what I want to photograph. The downside is that I cannot adjust the distance between the camera sensor and the tube lens. The other factor is that I use a 2.5x projection lens in the microscope. This means that I just use the good part of the image circle.

The ongoing discussion about tube lenses at different distances between the tube lens and the sensor is interesting. I also find the effect of different distances between tube lens and microscope objective interesting - for example this comment from Rik.
https://www.photomacrography.net/forum/ ... 290#126290

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:17 am

Thanks for that information, Jorgen.

Sym P. le · Post by **Sym P. le** » Wed Feb 19, 2020 6:34 am

I've never thought of scales in 3D. The depth looks exaggerated, perhaps illusory or just lack of familiarity. Are we seeing the stems of the missing scales protruding from the substrate?

JH · Post by JH » Wed Feb 19, 2020 8:16 am

Thanks for commenting!

Sym P. le wrote:I've never thought of scales in 3D. The depth looks exaggerated, perhaps illusory or just lack of familiarity. Are we seeing the stems of the missing scales protruding from the substrate?

Yes, stems from missing scales.

When it comes to synthetic stereo the depth is not perfect - but quite close - the perceived depth varies with viewing distance. I used a 40x objective and a 2.5x projection lens so 100x (40*2.5) on sensor. This means that the long side is approximately 0.36 mm (36/100) and the short side 0.24 mm. I stacked 140 photos for this picture and used a step size of 0.0005 mm so the depth, Z-axis, is approximately 0.07mm (140*0.0005) - the depth is close to 1/5 (0.07/0.36) of the long side.

Best regards
Jörgen Hellberg