Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

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shawngibson
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Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#1 Post by shawngibson » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:42 pm

Gosh I'm a bit lost here.

I created 492 images of a Planaria (worm), only about 3/4 of it (From the arse to a bit above the head, no head and none of those beautiful eyes). It was a prepared slide, no stains. The grid was:

Top left; top right
middle upper left; middle upper right
middle lower-left; middle lower-right
middle lower-lower-left; middle lower-lower-right
(at least 2 more vertical moves to get the head...so I gave up.)
I ran out of patience once I realized I have no clue how to put this together:(

I will make the rest of the images when I wake up. Including the head:)

My method was:

1) Find the top-most focus at grid A, A, and create images at 400, 800, and 1600 ms. I.e, dynamic range per focus point.
2) Move the focus (creating new focus points) and do the same as (1). Repeat as necessary (I think it was about 7 Z changes most of the time)
3) Move the stage to capture a different part of the specimen, and go through the steps at (1).

How the heck do I combine exposures, focus-points, and locations? I'm pretty good with stitching, very good usually, but this is a whole new world...[/b][/i]



Shawn
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shawngibson
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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#2 Post by shawngibson » Sat Oct 24, 2015 8:59 pm

One, very small, shot...out of hundreds
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mrsonchus
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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#3 Post by mrsonchus » Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:03 pm

Hmm, I'd say treat each Z-series as a separate entity..

At each point you have a series of exposures themselves at a series of focus-depths as I understand it, so, 'exposure-stack' each set of the same 'tile' or location of an ultimately stitched image. Toupview will do this with it's 'HDR' option. Then take the results which are themselves presumably a set of images of the same location but at different focus-depths, and stack them in the conventional way, this should give you a set of 'HDR'+stacked pieces (tiles) to perform a stitch with (for stitching Toupview is pretty poor - the superb and free Microsoft 'ICE' utility is easy to download, is easy to use and lightning-fast!) - I think this may do the trick....

I'd scale the whole thing down if I were you as an aid to learning, time saving and increasing your chance of success. If you are going to 'go the whole hog' at once, make sure you have an entire backup-set of your hard-earned source images and of all results at each stage - when image-processing of batches goes wrong things get ugly and your precious source and intermediate files can instantly become a distant memory if you don't take some precautions!

My advice, start with a tile-grid of say 5X5 'top-level' (i.e. for the stitching finish) images, each of these of course derived from your exposure and focus stacks..

So in brief, exposure stack them, focus stack them then stitch them!
Good luck, keep your fingers crossed!

Interesting to see what happens, it could give a very exciting result...or your computer may well run out of the house screaming!
:D :D
John B

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#4 Post by shawngibson » Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:11 pm

>>So in brief, exposure stack them, focus stack them then stitch them!

That's exactly how I created them...so that's good.

This may take a few days lol...

Shawn

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#5 Post by gekko » Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:35 pm

Shawn, if you don't mind my saying so, I think you are working much too hard. I may be wrong, but I don't think you need so many images for your stacks.

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#6 Post by shawngibson » Sat Oct 24, 2015 10:42 pm

That's quite possible, Gekko. I go by my eyes. As I move the fine focus, I look at the screen through the camera; when something comes into focus, or even partial focus, I make an image.

As I do this, I can feel that I'm doing too much, but I don't know where the compromise point is, so I take a photo of everything that comes into focus on my screen.

One should not need 30 stacks to get a small arthropod foot in focus...

Shawn

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#7 Post by gekko » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:06 pm

Well, as you say, you do extreme photography :) . More power to you.

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#8 Post by JimT » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:13 pm

You must be a glutton for punishment! I generally stack between two and six images depending on the subject and DOF. I also usually take two or three series of stackable images so I can pick the best ones to stack.

Doesn't need to be overkilled.

JimT

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#9 Post by shawngibson » Sat Oct 24, 2015 11:25 pm

Gekko and Jim,

As Gekko has already noted, I need to bring math into the mix.

You've got a very small specimen, a light source, a capturing device, and all of the techniques you can discover in order to get the best out of your input.

As I've said 1 or 2 times, I want to project these images onto 4'x4' approx. canvases and paint them.

So I really need both my techniques and equipment to work. A good camera (looking at a Sony A7R) and decent PLAN objectives is a good start, equipment-wise. The rest is up to me to succeed or fail.

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#10 Post by vasselle » Sun Oct 25, 2015 2:10 pm

Bonjour
Pour du stacking il faut bien calculer le nombres images qui faut pour crée image finale.
Car expérience je peux vous assurer que ça ne sert a rien de mettre autant image pour crée un stacking et en plus il faut bien préparer le spécimen que l'on veut photographier.
Et il faut commencer en stacking du haut vers le bas pour les piles images.
Car des fois ça fonctionne mieux quand par exemple on à 50 Photos et que l'on les travail par piles de 10 le résultats est des fois meilleures.
Cordialement seb
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Boitier EOS 1200D + EOS 1100D

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#11 Post by shawngibson » Sun Oct 25, 2015 2:26 pm

Thank you vasselle. I'm going to start by doing all of the stacks, then every 2nd, then every 3rd, and work with whatever gives the best results.

I focus with my eye on the monitor. As I turn the focus knob, I watch for structural changes, i.e. thinks coning into focus. So sometimes I may move the knob more, or less.

I do always start at the top and focus my way down:)

It's all very haphazard!

Shawn

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#12 Post by shawngibson » Sun Oct 25, 2015 4:57 pm

Gonna have a cow! I just spent all morning taking about 490 photos of the bottom part of the worm...but the toolbar in Toupview is gone! I can't "batch save"...freaking out here, and the manual does not say how to get the toolbar to show. Anyone know a way to get the toolbar to show again, please and thank you?

Edit, nevermind, found it. Somehow it got disconnected from TV...and was on my 3rd monitor. LOL. Phew. Heart attack over...

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#13 Post by shawngibson » Sun Oct 25, 2015 5:23 pm

Well Toupview crashed, saved 283 of some 490 images. Unfortunately the lost files are the ones connected with yesterdays files.

I am extremely angry right now :evil:

If I had noticed the toolbar on another monitor, instead of clicking like a madman to find it, this probably wouldn't have happened.

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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#14 Post by shawngibson » Sun Oct 25, 2015 7:23 pm

So I grouped the top and bottom photos separately. This will take a long time to put 750 approx. photos together. If It works.
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Re: Stitching, stacking and changing exposure (rather extreme photography)

#15 Post by shawngibson » Sun Oct 25, 2015 7:40 pm

1 more...
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