Macrophotography
Why Macrophotography?
This webpage shows some images I created between 2016 and 2019 and was triggered by a request from Bob Nelson – thanks Bob for your encouragement and support!
In early 2016, I read an article about photographing objects using an old CD drive. It used a stepper motor and was programmable and could be operated with a standard universal TV remote. The images were like nothing I had seen before and I had to try this for myself! The old CD drive would ‘step’ in small increments and the camera would take an image. After stepping hundreds of times and taking hundreds of images, the images were run through a program (Zerene Stacker) which took all the ‘in-focus’ parts and put them together into one final fully ‘in-focus’ image. This is called “Focus Stacking”.
I mentioned my project to a friend, Kathy Claerr, and she was kind enough to volunteer some insects she had and actually came over to help me set-up the specimens and shoot the images (see some of those images below). Since the CD drive moved the object, some delicate objects could not be imaged. I knew I needed to ‘upgrade’ my system so I tried using “Control My Nikon” – a program that could control a ‘tethered’ (attached to a laptop) camera and adjust the focus to take the multiple images. I used this for a while but thought it was leading to some distortion and decided to purchase a StackShot ‘rail’. This is a very precise rail system that moves the camera so the focus stays constant – sort of like a microscope. This unit is fully programmable so I could set up the start and end positions and walk away. I have also made a StackShot controlled stepper motor that adjusts the fine focus knob of my microscope so I can make microscopic images of micrometeorites and other microscopic objects (see examples of this in the Micrometeorite section of my website).
Focus Stacking Photography
If you’ve ever looked through a microscope with high magnification, you notice that only a small slice of the object is actually in focus and you need to move the focus up and down to see other parts/slices of the object in sharp focus.
In Focus Stacking Photography, many photographs (usually 100’s) are taken at various focus distances so that different parts of the object are in focus.
All these images are processed through a program that places just the ‘in-focus’ parts of each image into a final photograph that is sharp and in focus. The program I use is ZereneStacker but many others are online. Final processing is done with Photoshop and/or Lightroom.
The final stacked and processed image