Stacking setup
My specimen photos are taken using this setup. The base is a block of wood from the offcut bin of a hardware store that sells kitchen worktops. The camera is attached directly to a BPM focus rail, which is mounted on a tripod quick-release plate, screwed to the base through another small piece of wood. The rail allows me to move the camera and coarse focus it. At the other end of the table is the specialist equipment: a Proxxon KT 70 table, screwed to the base. This is a low-cost alternative to linear actuators or stacking rails: one turn of the handle moves the table 1 mm. The divisions on the dial are 0.05 mm, so by moving to half way between each one I take frames at 0.025 mm intervals, which is narrow enough for most whole-insect photos I take. Smaller intervals are possible with smaller movements of the handle, but they are not easy to measure. This idea came from John Hallmen: you can see his setup here. Without his advice, I would not have been able to do any of this, so thank you to John and to Nikola Rahme; two people whose photos I greatly admire and who have shared their techniques freely on flickr.
A SIlverline Helping Hands is mounted on the Proxxon table. The crocodile clip holds a piece of plastazote in its jaws; I stick the specimen's pin into the plastazote and try to get it in the same plane as the camera sensor. This is fiddly: a vertical setup would be easier for this, but it would need better handiwork skills than I have. A heavy granite base would also make for a more stable setup, as would a concrete floor instead of a wooden one, but there is nothing I can do about that in my house.
Lighting comes from a flourescent tube desk lamp. The lamp would not hold itself in the right position, so I broke it off from its stand and I held it in a clamp stand instead. I use a simple cylinder of greaseproof paper as a diffuser: this is just pushed on to the end of the lens. To help get a more even light I have a sheet of kitchen foil as a reflector opposite the lamp. I also fix on the camera a 26mm stepping ring with foil over the front, another idea from John Hallmen, explained here.
I have tried other lighting, such as using two Ikea lamps (like the one that carries the foil in the picture above), each with a plastic cup over it to act as a diffuser. But the setup shown here is the one I have come to prefer.
I use Zerene Stacker for the stacking, with DMap as my main image, retouched from the PMax image where the detail is lost in the DMap. Then the image is edited in GIMP before getting a posting here.
Stacking setup
My specimen photos are taken using this setup. The base is a block of wood from the offcut bin of a hardware store that sells kitchen worktops. The camera is attached directly to a BPM focus rail, which is mounted on a tripod quick-release plate, screwed to the base through another small piece of wood. The rail allows me to move the camera and coarse focus it. At the other end of the table is the specialist equipment: a Proxxon KT 70 table, screwed to the base. This is a low-cost alternative to linear actuators or stacking rails: one turn of the handle moves the table 1 mm. The divisions on the dial are 0.05 mm, so by moving to half way between each one I take frames at 0.025 mm intervals, which is narrow enough for most whole-insect photos I take. Smaller intervals are possible with smaller movements of the handle, but they are not easy to measure. This idea came from John Hallmen: you can see his setup here. Without his advice, I would not have been able to do any of this, so thank you to John and to Nikola Rahme; two people whose photos I greatly admire and who have shared their techniques freely on flickr.
A SIlverline Helping Hands is mounted on the Proxxon table. The crocodile clip holds a piece of plastazote in its jaws; I stick the specimen's pin into the plastazote and try to get it in the same plane as the camera sensor. This is fiddly: a vertical setup would be easier for this, but it would need better handiwork skills than I have. A heavy granite base would also make for a more stable setup, as would a concrete floor instead of a wooden one, but there is nothing I can do about that in my house.
Lighting comes from a flourescent tube desk lamp. The lamp would not hold itself in the right position, so I broke it off from its stand and I held it in a clamp stand instead. I use a simple cylinder of greaseproof paper as a diffuser: this is just pushed on to the end of the lens. To help get a more even light I have a sheet of kitchen foil as a reflector opposite the lamp. I also fix on the camera a 26mm stepping ring with foil over the front, another idea from John Hallmen, explained here.
I have tried other lighting, such as using two Ikea lamps (like the one that carries the foil in the picture above), each with a plastic cup over it to act as a diffuser. But the setup shown here is the one I have come to prefer.
I use Zerene Stacker for the stacking, with DMap as my main image, retouched from the PMax image where the detail is lost in the DMap. Then the image is edited in GIMP before getting a posting here.