Extreme macro photography

[ChrisR]

Subjects a few millimeters wide take a different approach than just turning your zoom to where it says "macro" . It's something I've been doing for quite a while. It gets as complicated as you want to let it get, but it needn't cost a bomb.
You need a DSLR really, but then you can add very cheap tubes and old lenses reversed. If you "stack" images, which there's free software to do, the results can be images that would have been impossible to produce a few years ago.
Here's couple of examples I took a while back using basic stuff - old enlarger lenses reversed. I can do a lot better now, but these are with a single flash and an old bellows. I could have used £10 extension tubes or something else..
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Field of view for both is about 3mm across.

I came across a site which explains some of this stuff, and is quite good because it
1) doesn't assume you know nothing about anything and treat you like an idiot
2) mostly shows use of cheap lenses
3) doesn't have any adverts and isn't selling anything!
Here : http://extreme-macro.co.uk/

 

[ericmark]

I have been interested in close-up and macro for some time. I have tried many methods. Bellows, close-up filter, reversing lens on camera, reversing lens on lens, and even have a microscope with a CCD on it.

The cameras have changed at first a film camera but now digital lucky Pentax K mount so still can use lenses bought in 1980 on new camera.

Stacking is interesting I have used Photoshop interesting to hear there is some free stuff. Used Hugin for Panorama and Picturenaut for HDR but never found anything but Photoshop for stacking so all ears.

I was rather surprised at results. To take a picture of a screw took a series of pictures with the microscope but with the D-SLR I could reduce the aperture to f32 and get the whole lot in one.

However not all has worked according to plan. Using a reversing ring and an old 95 - 210mm lens I found the zoom becomes focus and the focus becomes zoom. However once you reduce the aperture to increase depth of field the centre becomes lighter than the outside. This does not seem to happen with fixed length lenses.

This one was a little odd, I had found running around the garden chasing bees did not work. The only way was to select a flower and wait for a bee to land. However put a lens one inch from flower and guess what nothing lands. So some distance is required between the lens and the flower. So using a 600mm lens and 270mm of extension bellows resulted in some distance between the lens and the flower yet still a reasonable sized image.

I sat on a deck chair with a remote in my hand and waited. There is a big difference between still life and live stuff and I would not use the same method to take pictures of a plant. However one does get the odd one which works

this one used close-up lenses which are a lot easier to use.

So looking forward to seeing what you think.

 

[ChrisR]

HI Eric
To be sure the hardest bit about live stuff is getting close. It's amazing how some people manage.
I wouldn't fancy my chances with a 600f4 on a set of bellows! Most people manage with a 100 - 200mm macro lens of course.
There are lots of ways to get closer and closer - you end up chucking a load of money at it to get the best results, but some of the cheaper solutions are reasonable.
Your pics are nice but to be fair they're more "close-up". (Most people find that a long lens with a doublet close-up lens gives sharper results than using extension, because long lenses don't work too well focused close, by the way. Raynox ones are good, on a 100 - 300 prime)

The thing with f/32 is that actually, nothing's sharp. You can get a decent result for a web image, but for say an A3 print it'll be soft as hell. It's because of diffraction. I don't know how much you know about that... Your "Airy disc" will cover a lot of pixels so you've got a sharp picture, only if you don't blow it up - it's effectively about a 2Megapixel picture!
Look at Cambridgeincolour diffraction for a guide.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm

Your effective aperture is ((M+1) x the marked F number)
(unless you're using a recent Nikon micro). So at 1:1 f/8 becomes f/16, etc.
To not waste pixels on an APS sensor camera which has a 15MP sensor, you need something like Effective f/11 or bigger.
So at twice life size (~10mm subject width) you need about an f/4 lens, which is getting to be a stretch for a good one, then at 4x you need f/2 which is impossible - short of microscope objectives.
Hence the need for stacking.
Photoshop has stacking from I think CS4. (None of the Elements ones afaik)
And for high magnification, PS's stacker's not very good, there are better ones when you get down to flies & things.

For stacking at down to 1:1 or a bit more, you can just "move gradually". The software aligns things if you keep reasonably in-line. You can do a hand-held stack from a small number of shots quite easily.
This is from half a dozen. At f/11 I'd have only got a wing or so in focus. It's low-res here but the original is sharp at about 4000 high.

If you want to have a go at stacking and more than 1:1, I'd recommend you get a Nikon 50mm f/2.8 enlarger lens. About £30. It's well regarded, when you reverse it. You can JUST do the stepping on a bellows. Fine for wasp faces etc.
For higher magnifications you need something better, EG at 10x your depth of field is about 10 microns, = 0.01 mm, = not much. AT 50x it's down around 1 micron, and you need hundreds to 1000+ shots per final image.

 

[ericmark]

Lovely picture the reversing lens gave me this

note centre only happens when I stop down. The 50p image here

clearly macro but flat so easy. However without an overview

and this was one of my photos needed to show in pairs. Lighting is another problem

pictures like this need a lot of light and only real way is the flash gun.

This was 9 images not really sure if it was worth the effort the CCD on the microscope is only 640 x 480 so using simple close-up filters and a Pentax K10D one can crop and get a better image

see what you think. I have tried loo role and using microscope as the lens but at the time I did not have the monitoring software on PC and was trying to view through view finder.

 

[ChrisR]

The central hotspot is usually due to internal reflections. You can cut a ring of black paper with a hole in "just big enough" and put it immedicately behind the lens, or sometimes at the camera flange, to help with that. If you put the reversed lens on the tubes/bellows, and put your eye to the rear end, you'll see where the reflections are coming from.

Reversed normal lenses are usually pretty poor at the edges. Usually better is to couple one onto a longer camera lens. The problem then is with corners being cut off, but at one end (if it's a zoom) it usually works ok.

Yes, stick to flash for now. Vibration is a huge problem. But with any light source, close up, you need loads of diffusion. A paper tube round the subject works well, so it sees a "big sky".
Specular highlights from metallic shiny dots are a particular nuisance for reasons I won't go into, but again diffusion is all you can easily use to combat it.

Diffraction is making the screw picture and the coin fuzzy, too. At what, 4x(?) you have to multiply the aperture marked on the lens by 5. You're limited when using normal camera lenses to what they can do. Best aperture is likely to work out around f/5.6 on the lens, giving eff f/28, which is ok at net resolution. You will have about 50 microns DOF, that's 1/20th of a millimeter. That, surprisingly is just about doable by hand if you're well supported, but easier is to use the REAR knob on your bellows, (base rail tripod mounted) where you make larger adjustments to adjust the plane of focus a small amount.

Keep at it, it's quite absorbing though. The focus-incrementing bit is one you just have to crack somehow. You can use old microscope rails, all sorts. Proxxon do a milling table (~£70?) which a lot of people use. Other usable but unspecial mechanisms are the Manfrotto 454 and the Velbon Mag slider.

 

[ericmark]

I have a problem with microscope getting PC to recognise the camera bit on end should use AMCap but when moved from XP on desktop to Vista on Laptop failed to work. In the past I have used my SLR using a toilet role to join microscope to camera body not using a lens. Old microscope was vertical and mounting was not that hard but new one 30 degrees easier for the eye but not the camera. Using modern D-SLR with microscope not been that good. Using a microscope is is microscopy rather than macro-photography so may be wrong to ask here?

 

[SimonSnake]

Hardly "extreme close up", but very nice picture taken with Huawei Ascend P7 Smartphone which really shows off the subject. It was on a really windy day and the plant this thing had landed on was blowing around quite a bit, but after about 50 photographs were taken this was one of the best.

 

[ChrisR]

Nice pic. Female Southern Migrant Hawker, I think, though I'm no expert.
If you do all the sums it turns out you can take "the same" shot with an old-style larger camera, but the practicalities make the phone a heck of a lot easier, given good light. Nothing you can do about the busy background, if you want all the insect sharp.
I'm very bad at not scaring the things off, even from a larger distance. Work for hours trying, then get one good shot and some pillock says how lucky you were to get it...

 

[ericmark]

That is a really good shot. I know what you mean by lucky after hours setting up. I set up long lens 400mm with bellows aimed at a water iris sat in a deck chair reading book with remote on lap. When bee came along just pressed shutter release. Chasing a bee around the garden simply does not work. But with other insects the only way is to chase and lens and camera ISO is a huge factor. With my Nikon with a 18 ~ 270 mm Zoom you can press the shutter and count to 10 before lens has auto focused, with the Pentax and 18 ~ 55 mm Zoom it seems to focus in count of 1 or less. The compact is even quicker. So often the simpler camera is actually better.

However for competition rules for wild live are very different to general rules. To capture the workings of a watch I can stack photos, but that is not permitted with wild life. There are a lot of cheats where some one provides food on a regular basis for wild life then charges a fee to photographers to take pictures. The problem is of course detecting where people have cheated.

To me take a picture of a lion in a zoo or a safari park or a reserve the lion is still within a fence it just the fenced area increases. The debate is at what point is the lion wild?

 

[ChrisR]

I can stack photos, but that is not permitted with wild life.

Really? It depends who makes the rules up. It's possible to argue at every at every level on that one. The spider/fly above is stacked and retouched.

On focusing, yes a quick camera can work but I'd usually only use the autofocus, if at all, for getting the lens to about the right place, then I'd move for the precise focus point.

 

[JBR]

I have experimented with macrophotography in the distant past when I had an SLR, lenses and bellows. In fact, I think I still have them somewhere, but I haven't used 35mm film for many years.

More recently, I have taken some 3D pictures using a compact camera which I attached to a stereo dissecting microscope, each eyepiece in turn. I attach an example. (There is no need of any viewing device; just cross your eyes until you see three images and concentrate on the middle one.)

 

[ChrisR]

I think I've got several 35mm film bodies - somewhere!
If you do stacking you can produce a good stereo image from that with Zerene Stacker. Tutorial HERE

Not everyone can cross their eyes to "fuse" the pictures, though it's worth teaching oneself!
Here's a rocking version of part of the stack of the moth at the top of the thread, one antenna section - obviously:
(it's worth clarifying, this is produced from ONE stack of images)

 

[ericmark]

Most camera club have competitions and many members like to gain the letters behind their name which are some times gained by just paying money but often require acceptances into salons the circuit of judges also require some qualification and they are given standards to work on.

I don't agree with all the judging rules but wild live is very strict as to what is or is not allowed so an entry into a general competition may not be accepted in any wild life competition.

I do like to tone map and stack and use layers and masks a lot. So my wild life shots would not be accepted into a wild life competition. We are told judges start with every picture scoring 15 out of 20 points. Then then remove points for bad bits and add points for good bits. So in real terms no one gets less than 10 and 18, 19, and 20 equal third, second, and first.

This method does produce some odd results. And most don't really worry about the score but listen to what the Judge says. Some have odd ideas. To me plagiarism is when you steal some one else's work and claim it as your own. So have as part of a picture a cartoon character is not plagiarism as it clearly some ones drawing one can't really think the item existed and it's a photo, but I have seen photos disallowed because it contained a cartoon character. We get some judges who will knock off marks for a photo of a statue as they say the artist was person who made the statue. I disagree the lighting and angle is all important. In Snowdon there are scenes where you can see the tripod marks where loads of photographers have taken the same picture. But to me your not copying it just great minds think alike.

So some pictures I just don't enter. I know they would not conform with accepted standards.

 

[ChrisR]

Yeah, I'm in a camera club too. I was a judge for a while but stopped. I found I was supposed to conform to the norms and give say 8/10 when I thought a picture was crap and only worth 2, but the lowest "allowed" was about 6 1/2 anyway.
Currently most editing of wildlife pictures is allowed, and everyone does it. The pictures in the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition (is it British Gas??) are heavily "shopped" despite the rules. I know a couple of people who've done well. You edit the Raw file/exif data afterwards so you can show an "original" with only minor edits. The programs are out there.
The BBC Calendar competition winner - Brighton Pier/beach or something, is so heavily post-processed it's a joke. It looks silly, but joe public thinks it's great, so - does it matter?
Too many incompetents, half-wits, prima donnas and hypocrites around it all now. Grump grump mutter mutter!

One of the best club nights was when we all tore into each others pictures saying what we really thought. We were concerned that it might be risky to do it that way, but in fact nobody was offended at all - ultimately there are very few rights and wrongs.
If you want to do well in club competitions you can make pictures just to get good marks. It's a challenge, it's true, and I did it for a while, & won a load of cups and things about 20 years ago. Can't be harsed now though. And I may not be good enough with photoshop .

 

[ericmark]

I totally agree with you. My club has prints and digital competitions to move up the ranks you must submit both since I only submit digital (DPI) then I will always remain in the beginners section. Whole idea of beginners, intermediate and advanced was to give beginners a chance. However as it stands you have me with an "A" level in digital photography competing against true beginners which is not really fair.