Daphania Stack test

[Plasmid]

Playing with image stacking

[MichaelG.]

Daphnia looks good !!

Please do share some details of equipment, number of slices, etc.

MichaelG.

[Plasmid]

To be honest I don't have the slightest idea of what I'm doing. I downloaded a program called Combine ZP , the images were taken with a 5mp eyepiece camera interval 2 secs total of 15 pictures, then ran the "soft stack" command on the program. Im going to spend the night looking up tutorials on how to stack pictures.
Question when photographing a sample does one adjust the focus up and down of say a Rotifer while taking the pictures to then stack em together?
Thank you.

[janvangastel]

I don't know the answers, but the photographs are very nice. I think I'll also give it a try.

[D0c]

I have tried stacking while taking photos of dragonflies that have perched and stayed still for long enough.

I'm no expert and wouldn't even class myself a beginner but I done it the same way as you described. The camera was on a tripod and I placed the focus point over the head then the focus point over the legs then wings etc etc until the whole insect is done all this is done without moving the tripod or camera only using focus points.

Then using photoshop CS6 I aligned and stacked the images.

I hope this helps a bit but as I said I've only attempted it a few times.

[mrsonchus]

These are very nice pictures! Great also to begin-with. Your basic technique is demonstrably sound I'd say, a great jump-off-point.

Direction of image-taking, one direction only, either up or down as it were for the set. Some stacking software prefers or is optimised by design for one or the other but personally I just go with whatever direction I like at the time. I use Helicon Focus, much the same as Helicon. These two seem to be the 'main' stacking programs out there.

So, examine the focus and decide on points for your extremes, top and bottom, then just move from one to the other taking images focused through the range of depth - don't get too worried about a huge number of images, consider also that it's not always best to try to include the entire depth of the specimen - most of the best images ever taken have a selected range of focus rather than a complete one I think.

Start with say a 5 or 10 image stack and perfect your technique. It most definitely isn't a simple case of 'more images in the stack the better' - it's judgement that depends on many factors, the most significant being the qualitative characters of the specimen rather than slavishly spacing X-number of images Y-distance apart and assuming the optimum will result.

Decide what you want to show first, then consider the translucency of the subject and remember to minimise (hard to eliminate with anything other than a completely opaque subject anyway) 'overlapping' focus points - you simply can't have two points in focus at the same time if one is on top of the other - confusion of what the image result actually represents will result; it may look fine and probably good, but consider after stacking the result and what it is actually showing about the subject - is it what you wanted or is it even a true/useful representation of the subject at all....

Start with technique 5-10 image stacks, half a dozen trials later you'll be amazed at your progress I'm sure.
Oh - keep us posted - we all learn from seeing others work regardless of our experience levels - not to mention it's just plain enjoyable and interesting to share!

Keep it up, it's going well!