Quite a shiny critter, I'll try a double layer of diffuser material on the next stack of this sort of ant!
As usual for now, aligned in CZM, stacked in Tufuse. Stack of 80 pictures with Nikon 10x CF objective.
Bigger ant
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Bigger ant
I'm not good on ant species but this was much bigger than my last ant, around 6mm body length. It has a completely different skin texture to the last one, it's all ridged like the one Rik posted recently in the tufuse multi-stack compositing thread...
Quite a shiny critter, I'll try a double layer of diffuser material on the next stack of this sort of ant!
As usual for now, aligned in CZM, stacked in Tufuse. Stack of 80 pictures with Nikon 10x CF objective.
Quite a shiny critter, I'll try a double layer of diffuser material on the next stack of this sort of ant!
As usual for now, aligned in CZM, stacked in Tufuse. Stack of 80 pictures with Nikon 10x CF objective.
One thing for sure, stacking leaves nothing to ones imagination. 
-
rjlittlefield
- Site Admin
- Posts: 23625
- Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
- Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
- Contact:
One word: Wow! 
Mother Nature does much better than my imagination could possibly do, and you have captured it beautifully.
Pose is both attractive and informative. Full-frontal gives away a lot of pixels because of the symmetry, and full profile often seems sterile, to me anyway, sort of like a mug shot. But this half-frontal angle works great.
Illumination seems to be diffuse enough to hold almost all the surface texture, though those specular reflections do seem a bit bright. I think your plan is good to try a double layer next time.
I notice that this image seems a bit "faded", in the sense that it doesn't have many pure blacks. Photoshop histogram shows almost no pixels below value 12. The image would have more snap with a levels adjustment to use the full range.
Whether that would be an accurate representation of your subject, I have no idea -- you're the one with the actual insect. But I usually go for snap anyway. There's really no point in trying to produce an accurate gray scale unless you're willing to carry along reference patches as part of the image, and that pretty much destroys the artistry!
Both the specimen and the stacking seem very clean. That one abnormally bright bristle at top center is a bit distracting, though. If that's just an artifact of the lighting, I'd be inclined to tone it down a bit in post-processing.
I like the background on this shot, particularly the very OOF but nonetheless textured stuff below the head. I'm not sure about the very dark background in this case. It might be a detriment, since it limits your ability to adjust levels without pushing the background to pure black. On the other hand, it creates a strong contrasty pattern when seen at a distance or in a thumbnail, which can invite people to came take a closer look at all the wonderful detail. Sound wishy-washy? That's because I've learned over the years that what I think when I actually see an image is often quite different from what I thought I would think when I imagined seeing the image. Or something like that... Weren't we just talking about imagination?
Anyway, you've done a super job on this portait. More, please!
--Rik
Mother Nature does much better than my imagination could possibly do, and you have captured it beautifully.Pose is both attractive and informative. Full-frontal gives away a lot of pixels because of the symmetry, and full profile often seems sterile, to me anyway, sort of like a mug shot. But this half-frontal angle works great.
Illumination seems to be diffuse enough to hold almost all the surface texture, though those specular reflections do seem a bit bright. I think your plan is good to try a double layer next time.
I notice that this image seems a bit "faded", in the sense that it doesn't have many pure blacks. Photoshop histogram shows almost no pixels below value 12. The image would have more snap with a levels adjustment to use the full range.
Whether that would be an accurate representation of your subject, I have no idea -- you're the one with the actual insect. But I usually go for snap anyway. There's really no point in trying to produce an accurate gray scale unless you're willing to carry along reference patches as part of the image, and that pretty much destroys the artistry!
Both the specimen and the stacking seem very clean. That one abnormally bright bristle at top center is a bit distracting, though. If that's just an artifact of the lighting, I'd be inclined to tone it down a bit in post-processing.
I like the background on this shot, particularly the very OOF but nonetheless textured stuff below the head. I'm not sure about the very dark background in this case. It might be a detriment, since it limits your ability to adjust levels without pushing the background to pure black. On the other hand, it creates a strong contrasty pattern when seen at a distance or in a thumbnail, which can invite people to came take a closer look at all the wonderful detail. Sound wishy-washy? That's because I've learned over the years that what I think when I actually see an image is often quite different from what I thought I would think when I imagined seeing the image. Or something like that... Weren't we just talking about imagination?
Anyway, you've done a super job on this portait. More, please!
--Rik
-
gpmatthews
- Posts: 1040
- Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:54 am
- Location: Horsham, W. Sussex, UK
- Contact:
