SequentialMacro
Exterior Beauty
Here guys, is a 12x image of a single compound eye of a Female Horse Fly.
After finishing the full frame image, I felt it neccessary to do a full stack of it's amazing eyes... something that really drags me into the image is the reflection of the Objective in each single lens of the eye - amazes me every time I look at it !
To see this more clearly click this for a larger image. www.flickr.com/photos/sequentialmacro/7625886564/sizes/k/...
Now, to some people, I said i would include certain images below to explain the lighting setup, but I unfortunately don't have the time as I'm off to Scotland in 12 hours - but I will surely post them up when I return so sorry about that !!
About the image at hand - I manually moved the fly at distances of a micro ( 1um ) meter for each image - or there about', hard to tell as I always state with my setup :D
Dmap gives the best results, some retouching with Pmax, same old story you know by now.
Now in Photoshop, something I always do, which is a necessity, Click filter-Noise-reduce noise and add some sharpening at around 50 - 70 percent, not too much as this causes more noise than is being removed !
I want to say something to anyone wanting to begin stacking that always look for the cheapest option first. Start by doing what I did, a simple Cog motor that pulls a cd drive along by means of some string attached to the motor at one ed and the CD Drive the other.
It costs 20 pounds and the above is what you can get, so no need for that 100 pound stacking device :)
Lighting, as some of you have asked, is literally 2 Lamps bought from ASDA or something, one 60Watt and the other 100Watt - terrible lamps, but anything works as long as you diffuse the light with paper, tissue etc etc...
Something I have realised whilst on my Journey of Macro Photography, is that of a simple rule. You don't need the most expensive stuff out there - sure it helps - but, having cheap stuff makes it more exciting, facing a problem head-on and overcoming it is something I have done countless times. If it hasn't been lighting or equipment faults, it's been something else to stop me creating Macro work.
I hope I can take this to the next level now and try and get something that will be good enough to win this years Photography comp. or even runner up would make my day !
Enjoy the week - I know I will in Scotland !
Exterior Beauty
Here guys, is a 12x image of a single compound eye of a Female Horse Fly.
After finishing the full frame image, I felt it neccessary to do a full stack of it's amazing eyes... something that really drags me into the image is the reflection of the Objective in each single lens of the eye - amazes me every time I look at it !
To see this more clearly click this for a larger image. www.flickr.com/photos/sequentialmacro/7625886564/sizes/k/...
Now, to some people, I said i would include certain images below to explain the lighting setup, but I unfortunately don't have the time as I'm off to Scotland in 12 hours - but I will surely post them up when I return so sorry about that !!
About the image at hand - I manually moved the fly at distances of a micro ( 1um ) meter for each image - or there about', hard to tell as I always state with my setup :D
Dmap gives the best results, some retouching with Pmax, same old story you know by now.
Now in Photoshop, something I always do, which is a necessity, Click filter-Noise-reduce noise and add some sharpening at around 50 - 70 percent, not too much as this causes more noise than is being removed !
I want to say something to anyone wanting to begin stacking that always look for the cheapest option first. Start by doing what I did, a simple Cog motor that pulls a cd drive along by means of some string attached to the motor at one ed and the CD Drive the other.
It costs 20 pounds and the above is what you can get, so no need for that 100 pound stacking device :)
Lighting, as some of you have asked, is literally 2 Lamps bought from ASDA or something, one 60Watt and the other 100Watt - terrible lamps, but anything works as long as you diffuse the light with paper, tissue etc etc...
Something I have realised whilst on my Journey of Macro Photography, is that of a simple rule. You don't need the most expensive stuff out there - sure it helps - but, having cheap stuff makes it more exciting, facing a problem head-on and overcoming it is something I have done countless times. If it hasn't been lighting or equipment faults, it's been something else to stop me creating Macro work.
I hope I can take this to the next level now and try and get something that will be good enough to win this years Photography comp. or even runner up would make my day !
Enjoy the week - I know I will in Scotland !