View allAll Photos Tagged focusstacking
Shot of a Melitaea caterpillar at the edge of a grass blade
Tech info | 34 natural light exposures stacked
Stacking Soft / Zerene Zerene Stacker
Nikon el-Nikkor N 50mm/f2.8 | Pentax M Bellows
| Pentax K5
Merger of focus-stacked 70 images in Helicon Focus. Processed in Photoshop and DxO Nik Color Efex 4.
Focus-stack of 101 images captured in Helicon Remote and merged in Helcon Focus. Processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic and ON1 Photo Raw 2018 Effects (Dynamic Contrast and Tone Enhancer)
Identification
Coarse crystals: Sea salt
Fine granular mound: Table salt
How to tell (visual cues)
Sea salt (left / larger crystals)
Irregular, jagged shapes
Larger particle size
More variation in translucency and edges
Formed by evaporation → less processed, so structure varies
Table salt (mound / fine grains)
Very small, uniform cubic crystals
Packs densely into a smooth-looking mound
Highly refined and consistent grain size
Description
Low-angle macro of two salt types interacting:
A dense mound of fine table salt creates a smooth, almost powder-like texture.
Surrounding it, coarse sea salt crystals scatter irregularly, catching light with harder highlights.
The contrast reads like a micro landscape: a dune (table salt) surrounded by crystalline debris (sea salt).
Lighting emphasizes:
specular highlights on coarse crystals
softer, granular sheen on the fine salt
What makes this work visually
Scale illusion: looks like terrain or snowfield
Shape contrast: cubic micro-grains vs fractured macro-crystals
Density contrast: packed vs scattered
Optical contrast: matte vs sparkle
This is a stacked image. There were 1290 images in the stack.
A fire follower, this was seen the spring following the Park Hill Fire of 2015,
Eastern San Luis Obispo Co., California
Ips amitinus (female ?)
Body length : 5.2 mm
20.VII.2021
Bourg-Saint-Maurice, Arc 2000, Savoie, France
Found within star shaped galleries on Pinus sp.
- Focus stack of 71-100 images
- Microscope objectives (Nikon M Plan 10x 160/0.25 + Cheap Chinese Plan 4x 160/0.17)
- Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II
NB : the right anterior tarsus was missing and has been cloned from the left one
This is a composite created by focus stacking 5 images of the same rose with slightly different focus. D300, Sigma 150mm at f8 with polarizer, ISO200, Ringflash with polarizer.
This little guy came from the drainage of a hot spring in Lassen County, California. The white fuzzy stuff he is resting on is a "Q-Tip", or an equivalent generic brand of swab.
I created this image with my old Nikon D50 DSLR. I used an inexpensive 10X microscope finite objective lens (160mm focal length), mounted on a stack of extension tubes with a Nikon to RMS adapter on the front end of the tube stack. There was no other lens- just the microscope objective- projecting an image directly onto the camera's 23.7 x 15.5mm image sensor.
I used Zerene Stacker to stack together 67 photos, combining them into the one you see here.
Each image was taken with the subject progressively farther from the lens. I used a micrometer stage from an old optical comparator to move the subject a smidgen before each new frame. Each smidgen was calibrated to allow some slight overlap for the depth of field, to prevent banding in the final image.
This allows the extremely shallow (about 12 microns, or 0.00047 inches) DOF to be compensated for, with special software than can "glue together" the individual 12-micron slices of sharp focus into a usable complete image.
The image as seen here was the complete frame from the camera (uncropped). At the 10X magnification of the microscope lens, that means that the subject fits into a frame that is 2.4mm across. So the critter is a hair under 2mm long, in "real life".
Lighting was provided exclusively by a 33-watt compact-fluorescent "circline" bulb in the ceiling of the kitchen where this image was created. Exposure time per frame was 2 seconds.
Click here to read the Wikipedia entry about Springtails.
Only ever seem to see these things when the weather cools down around winter time.
Focus stacked using Zerene.
First attempt at focus stacking - after a few failed tries, I learned the hard way that the lastest version of Photoshop (15.1) has a bug and doesnt mask the focus areas when using the Auto Blend layers command.
Focus Stack aus 8 Bildern, direkt in der Olympus OM-D E-M1 erstellt.
Das Telefon, auf dem der kleine Drache sitzt, ist übrigens ein Nokia Lumia 925 aus dem Jahre 2013 mit damals noch Windows Mobile als Betriebssystem... lang, lang ist es her...
This is a head of kale growing in the greenhouse at Lexington Community Farm. Once harvested, it will be sold in the farm's store or distributed in the CSA program. I'd been meaning to photograph these in the field, but breezes make focus stacks difficult. This one has 65 frames.
I think I have the ID right for this attractively coloured Psocoptera, this one was quite a willing subject and stayed put for a series of focus stacks. This was a 12 image handheld focus stack of this little one. this I think a later nymph stage and was about 2.5mm in length.
Some Wiki info :-
Psocoptera are an order of insects that are commonly known as booklice, barklice or barkflies. They first appeared in the Permian period, 295–248 million years ago. They are often regarded as the most primitive of the hemipteroids. Their name originates from the Greek word ψωκος, psokos meaning gnawed or rubbed and πτερα, ptera meaning wings. There are more than 5,500 species in 41 families in three suborders. Many of these species have only been described in recent years.
They range in size from 1–10 millimeters (0.04–0.4 in) in length.
The species known as booklice received their common name because they are commonly found amongst old books—they feed upon the paste used in binding. The barklice are found harmlessly on trees, feeding on algae and lichen. No member of this order is currently considered endangered; in fact, in 2007, Atlantopsocus adustus, a species native to Madeira and the Canary Islands, was found to have colonized the mild Cornish coast of southwest England.
In the 2000s, morphological and molecular evidence has shown that the parasitic lice (Phthiraptera) evolved from within the psocopteran suborder Troctomorpha. In modern systematics, Psocoptera and Phthiraptera are therefore treated together in the order Psocodea.
VIEW LARGE
Material: Sea glass (weathered glass fragments)
Formed from discarded glass (bottles, tableware, etc.) tumbled in water for decades until edges round and surfaces become frosted
Colors reflect original manufactured glass, not mineral origin
Colors present (your image):
Red (large dominant pieces)
Pink / magenta
Yellow / amber
Blue / cobalt-like
Clear / white backing pieces
Rarity context (important):
Red, pink, and yellow are among the rarest sea glass colors
Blue ranges from uncommon to rare depending on shade
Clear/white is common
Conclusion:
This is a curated composition of mixed-rarity sea glass, heavily weighted toward rare colors.
Description
Arrangement: Layered, overlapping fragments forming a dense, interlocking structure
Dominant form: A long, horizontal red shard acting as a visual anchor
Surface:
Matte frosting (true sea-glass weathering)
Pitting and micro-abrasion visible (good authenticity indicator)
Edges: Rounded but still irregular → suggests moderate-to-advanced tumbling, not over-polished
Lighting:
Backlighting / transmitted light enhances saturation
Internal glow in yellow and pink pieces
Background: Black, increasing contrast and isolating color fields
Found this couple of leafroller weevils (Apoderus coryli, Atellabidae) on Alder near the river Gauja (Latvia, Valmiera, July 2014, excessively hot day, +30°C).
Fieldstack based on 9 images (incomplete). Assembled in Zerene Stacker (Dmap & Pmax) and treated in GIMP to remove artifacts.
Canon 5D mkii, EF 100mm macro 1:2.8 USM + 21mm extension ring, ISO-400, f/9, step -0.3, 1/13s, natural light, late afternoon. Slightly cropped image.
Previous post on this species in the first comment