first attempt

Images made through a microscope. All subject types.

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Mickyfynn
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:15 am
Location: Bradford, Yorkshire

first attempt

Post by Mickyfynn »

Spider
Spider
This is my first attempt at this. I am using a GXCAM USB 3, 5mp camera through a
GMX zoom1 Stereo scope. Can any body offer and advice or suggestions regarding
image processing ie Stacking etc

regards

rjlittlefield
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Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Re: first attempt

Post by rjlittlefield »

Welcome aboard! I see you figured out how to post images, but just in case, I did link to the instructions in your other post that asked about that.

As for suggestions about image processing, that's a broad topic. I often write about focus stacking, and I'm the fellow who created Zerene Stacker software.

But at this point in your journey, I'm not sure what to offer other than "try it".

There's a lot of documentation indexed at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/docs/tutorials/tutorialsindex (the Tutorials section of the Zerene Stacker website). The page at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/docs/howtouseit ("How To Use Zerene Stacker") will give you the basics of button pushing, which are pretty simple (load images, stack images, save output).

As for shooting the images in the first place, I suggest to start by just tweaking the focus knob in small steps that are just barely enough to make visible changes in focus. Then process those images and look for "focus banding", which refers to bands of blur between bands of sharp. If you see those, then the focus steps were too big. If you don't, then the steps were OK and maybe you could even have used bigger steps. It's common for the process to require more images (smaller steps) than people expect based on intuition. I suggest to start with something like 10 steps, which can be done pretty quickly and will give you some idea what the tradeoffs are. But for serious work at this scale, most people quickly find themselves in the range of 50 steps or more.

--Rik

Mickyfynn
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:15 am
Location: Bradford, Yorkshire

Re: first attempt

Post by Mickyfynn »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Thu Dec 08, 2022 9:19 am
Welcome aboard! I see you figured out how to post images, but just in case, I did link to the instructions in your other post that asked about that.

As for suggestions about image processing, that's a broad topic. I often write about focus stacking, and I'm the fellow who created Zerene Stacker software.

But at this point in your journey, I'm not sure what to offer other than "try it".

There's a lot of documentation indexed at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/docs/tutorials/tutorialsindex (the Tutorials section of the Zerene Stacker website). The page at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/docs/howtouseit ("How To Use Zerene Stacker") will give you the basics of button pushing, which are pretty simple (load images, stack images, save output).

As for shooting the images in the first place, I suggest to start by just tweaking the focus knob in small steps that are just barely enough to make visible changes in focus. Then process those images and look for "focus banding", which refers to bands of blur between bands of sharp. If you see those, then the focus steps were too big. If you don't, then the steps were OK and maybe you could even have used bigger steps. It's common for the process to require more images (smaller steps) than people expect based on intuition. I suggest to start with something like 10 steps, which can be done pretty quickly and will give you some idea what the tradeoffs are. But for serious work at this scale, most people quickly find themselves in the range of 50 steps or more.

--Rik
Hi Rik

that's very informative thank you. Does your software accommodate stacking using a short video sequence say about 50 or 60 frames ?. I will definitely have a look at your software. I came across it whilst browsing for just such a program.

Thank you again for replying to my email in the first place ..much appreciated....regards...Mick

rjlittlefield
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Re: first attempt

Post by rjlittlefield »

Mickyfynn wrote:
Fri Dec 09, 2022 7:33 am
Does your software accommodate stacking using a short video sequence say about 50 or 60 frames ?
Not directly. You would have to use another program to separate the video into separate frames, then feed those into Zerene Stacker.

Directly accepting video is becoming a more frequent request. I expect to put that into some future version, but no idea right now when that might be. Certainly not in the next few months.

--Rik

Mickyfynn
Posts: 19
Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:15 am
Location: Bradford, Yorkshire

Re: first attempt

Post by Mickyfynn »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Fri Dec 09, 2022 11:31 am
Mickyfynn wrote:
Fri Dec 09, 2022 7:33 am
Does your software accommodate stacking using a short video sequence say about 50 or 60 frames ?
Not directly. You would have to use another program to separate the video into separate frames, then feed those into Zerene Stacker.

Directly accepting video is becoming a more frequent request. I expect to put that into some future version, but no idea right now when that might be. Certainly not in the next few months.

--Rik
Thanks again Rik..I've got plenty to be going at there. I m looking forward to trying your software out. I'm looking for subjects Iam particularly interested in Spiders which for reasons unknown to me seem to gross the rest of my family out..😅

rjlittlefield
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Re: first attempt

Post by rjlittlefield »

Mickyfynn wrote:
Sat Dec 10, 2022 1:28 pm
😅
I am delighted(?) to say that you have shown me a feature of the forum software that I did not know about.

That particular emoticon is not one of our "Smilies". Instead your post is encoded in our database using a syntax I have never seen:

Code: Select all

<EMOJI seq=\"1f605\" tseq=\"1f605\">&#128517;</EMOJI>
So, I am curious.

How exactly did you get that emoji into your post?

Was it just copy/pasted or dragged in from some other source, or did you use some other method that has not occurred to me?

--Rik

Scarodactyl
Posts: 1617
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:26 am

Re: first attempt

Post by Scarodactyl »

🌋🌏🏣🌇🤔
You can just type them with a phone keyboard.

rjlittlefield
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Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
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Re: first attempt

Post by rjlittlefield »

Aha, silly me! Now I suppose all those other emojis are just single Unicode characters also, like the one that Mickyfinn used.

https://unicode-table.com/en/1F605/ "Name: Smiling Face with Open Mouth and Cold Sweat"

I suppose the forum software must spot such characters coming in from the keyboard, and turn them into the EMOJI tag inside the database.

--Rik

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