Aphid alive stack

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lothman
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Location: Stuttgart/Germany

Aphid alive stack

Post by lothman »

Today I tried speed stacking, set everything up, put to LED Panels at full power and gave those aphids some minutes to calm down. Then I pressed shutter at max frame rate (10 fps on my A7riv) and at the same time drove my stepper motor slider (MKJZZ) at low speed. This worked quite well.

Mitutoyo 7,5x and 93 frames.

regards
Lothar
Aphid_pmgf.jpg

lothman
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by lothman »

another aphid but this time Mitu 10x
10x_laus_b1024.jpg

svbreakaway
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by svbreakaway »

lothman wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 12:40 pm
put to LED Panels at full power
Striking image. I can almost feel them crawling on me.

Can I ask, what LED panels are you using? And are you using a diffuser with them?

Thanks,
Mike Niemi

lothman
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by lothman »

svbreakaway wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 2:52 am

Can I ask, what LED panels are you using? And are you using a diffuser with them?

Thanks,
Mike Niemi
shure I used two Viltrox RB08 Link Aliexpress, you can charge via USB but they do not work when charging, a diffusor can be clipped on magnetic and you can adjust brightness and colour and mount them with 1/4" camera thread.
There are other brands and vendors. If I would buy new ones I would check that they are able to run at a power supply because stacking can take a while and drains those small batteries fast when used at full power.

iconoclastica
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by iconoclastica »

Remove the battery and solder the light's wires to a power connector instead. Then you can connect any power source, including the original battery.
That is, if the light has the screws to open it...
--- felix filicis ---

Adalbert
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by Adalbert »

Hi Lothar,

great photos!

BTW, I use Godox LED64:
https://de.aliexpress.com/item/32775983 ... hweb201603_

Best,
ADi

Sumguy01
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Location: Ketchikan Alaska USA

Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by Sumguy01 »

=D> Very nice.
Thanks for sharing.

MarkSturtevant
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by MarkSturtevant »

Nicely done!
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

pawelfoto
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Location: Poland

Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by pawelfoto »

Superb quality. Great sharpness, colors and lighting that gives a 3D impression. I like it very much. How do you technically do it? I can imagine a quick internal focus bracketing with a lazy live insect that would give 90 frames suitable for stacking. But you are writing about the stepper motor slider. Is the camera in burst mode and how much RAW can be done in series? Does the rail run continuously and does it not cause vibrations? What shutter speed allows to freeze motion? With my 80W LED lighting and diffusers I get max 1/20 1/40sec at ISO 100. The higher power of the LED bulbs caused the specimen and the equipment to warm up. But my stacks are as long as 10-15 minutes. (2-3 seconds waiting time between the shutter to calm down the vibrations)
== best, Pawel

lothman
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by lothman »

pawelfoto wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 4:11 am
Superb quality. Great sharpness, colors and lighting that gives a 3D impression. I like it very much. How do you technically do it? I can imagine a quick internal focus bracketing with a lazy live insect that would give 90 frames suitable for stacking. But you are writing about the stepper motor slider. Is the camera in burst mode and how much RAW can be done in series? Does the rail run continuously and does it not cause vibrations? What shutter speed allows to freeze motion? With my 80W LED lighting and diffusers I get max 1/20 1/40sec at ISO 100. The higher power of the LED bulbs caused the specimen and the equipment to warm up. But my stacks are as long as 10-15 minutes. (2-3 seconds waiting time between the shutter to calm down the vibrations)
== best, Pawel
Hi Pawel,
Sony does not allow focus bracketing :-( so I have to stack by moving. I used ISO 500, exposure was 1/200 and the rail was moving constantly. To my surprise that worked fine. I used the Sony A7riv in burst mode and played a little around with moving speed and burst rate. I used jpg no raw. For 7,5 x and 10x max burst rate and slowest speed (MKJZZ-stepper control) was need to avoid focus banding. Zerene does an incredible job on aligning and stacking, followed by Topaz denoise and Photoshop for editing.

I think für a "normal" 1:1 macro lens this can be used by hand to get a stack. Setting the camera on a monopod press fire and slowly move the camera. Or with an otherwise not so useful rack and pinion driven macro slider you can easily travel some mm at constant speed while doing a camera burst. Crank ISO up to reach 1/200...1/500 and if necessary denoise after stacking.

@Rik
can noise cause artefacts in Zerene? Would you recommend to denoise before stacking? So far my samples shown here at ISO 500 may be ISO 800 made no trouble.

Link to a bigger version of the first picture

rjlittlefield
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Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by rjlittlefield »

Very nice -- live subjects are hard to stack!
lothman wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 5:01 am
@Rik
can noise cause artefacts in Zerene? Would you recommend to denoise before stacking? So far my samples shown here at ISO 500 may be ISO 800 made no trouble.
PMax accumulates noise, so it is always best to shoot at the lowest ISO possible. Other than that, my standard recommendation is what's described in the FAQs at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/d ... ne_stacker
Should I sharpen [and/or reduce noise] before or after running Zerene Stacker?

In many cases it doesn't matter. If you have a good sharpening tool that can identify and sharpen real detail while leaving pixel noise largely unchanged, then you may get better results by running it before Zerene Stacker. That's because it improves the “signal-to-noise ratio”, which helps Zerene Stacker to make better decisions. But with sharpening filters that do not have that level of discrimination, you'll get similar results either way and it's quicker and safer to just sharpen the final result. If you do sharpen before stacking, be sure not to oversharpen because fixing that problem would require reprocessing the whole stack.

The same reasoning applies to noise reduction. If you can reduce noise while preserving real detail, then that improves the signal-to-noise ratio and it's a good thing to do before running Zerene Stacker. Just don't overdo it, again because fixing that problem would require reprocessing the whole stack.
--Rik

lothman
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Location: Stuttgart/Germany

Re: Aphid alive stack

Post by lothman »

rjlittlefield wrote:
Sun May 30, 2021 9:48 am

PMax accumulates noise, so it is always best to shoot at the lowest ISO possible. Other than that, my standard recommendation is what's described in the FAQs at https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker/d ... ne_stacker
--Rik
Thanks Rik

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