Making progress (on a steep learning curve)

OK, let me say right at the outset that using a manual focus rail like my new-ish NiSi NM-200 to create a 328-photo focus stack is insane! So I regrouped, made a new plan, and conducted some tests.

I discovered, albeit too late, that I needed to shoot a lot of  photos for my last focus stack because I chose to use an aperture of f/8 and the “safe step size” for f/8 (at 1x magnification) is 40 µm (micrometers, or microns) — a relatively small step size.

In contrast, at 1x magnification the safe step size for f/11 is 800 µm — during limited testing that seems to be the sweet spot for creating focus stacks that look fairly good using fewer photos.

Canon EOD 5D Mark II DSLR camera plus Canon EF 100mm macro lens (1x, f/11)

The following composite image was created from 20 photos.

The background is the non-reflective side of a piece of black plastic. It’s textured surface appears to be a bad fit for macro photography — notice lots of little white specks on the background. Not good.

f/11 | 1/200 s | ISO 100 | Manual WB (Flash)

But wait, there’s one more thing. Did you notice the copper penny hiding underneath the quarter? Well, it was supposed to be hiding. I borrowed the idea from another photographer whose name I can’t remember. The point is to create some visual relief for the coin in the photo. The plan might have turned out OK if I’d noticed the misalignment of the penny before I did the focus bracketing.

Fujifilm X-T5 mirrorless digital camera plus Fujinon 80mm macro lens (1x, f/11)

The following composite image was created from 26 photos.

For the background, I used the white reference card from a Vello White Balance Card Set (Small). I set the white balance for AUTO WHITE PRIORITY WBW — a new setting (at least new to me) that’s supposed to result in whiter whites.

f/11 | 1/250 s | ISO 125 | WBW

The subject is in focus from back-to-front, and I like the white background. I think this is the best composite image I’ve created so far, but as always, you be the judge.

Fujifilm X-T5 mirrorless digital camera plus Fujinon 80mm macro lens (1x, f/11)

The following composite image was created from 21 photos.

For the background, I used the black reference card from a Vello White Balance Card Set (Small). I think it looks better than the textured black plastic background in the first photo, although I think the white background looks best.

f/11 | 1/250 s | ISO 125 | WBW

Pixel-peepers will notice the far end of the nickel isn’t as sharp as the rest of the coin. That’s because a man-caused disaster forced me to leave out the first two photos in the set. I hope the man responsible for this sloppy work will be held accountable for his actions!

Tech Tips

I think it’s worth noting that all three composite images were created using unedited JPGs straight out of the camera. All of the composite images could have been improved by making a few edits to the RAW files such as adjusting exposure, increasing contrast, and adding a little sharpening, to name a few.

In these test cases, I was looking for focus banding caused by using a step size that’s too big and glitches caused by Helicon Focus, the focus stacking software I used. As far as I can see, no problems.

My NiSi NM-200 is mounted on a Manfrotto 405 3-Way, Geared Pan-and-Tilt Head. The camera line of sight was inclined at a 45° angle relative to the staging surface. That’s less important in this case and more important for an upcoming review of the NiSi NM-200 focus rail.

Both cameras were set for manual exposure. Both lenses were set for manual focus; the combination of manual focus and back-button [auto]focus gives me the best of both worlds.

I use single point focus nearly all the time. I moved the focus point to the farthest point of each subject, then used back-button focus to autofocus on the subject and shoot a photo. Without changing focus from the first photo, I used the focus rail to move across the subject from back-to-front in 800 µm increments (eight numbered increments on the NiSi larger adjustment knob), taking a photo at each step.

More light is required for proper exposure at f/11 than f/8. I used one Sunpak LED-160, one Godox TT685C external flash unit (plus Altura flash modifier), and one Godox MF-12 external flash to light the first subject (Virginia quarter). Two Sunpak-160s and two Godox TT685C external flash units (using Altura and Lastolite flash modifiers) were used to light the last two subjects (quarter and nickel coins).

Related Resources

• Zerene Stacker DOF Calculator
• Fujifilm Colors: Auto White vs Auto Ambience, by pal2tech (12:47)
• Helicon Focus – Quick Start on Mac OS, by HeliconSoft (2:20)

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Comedy of errors

My first big focus stack turned out to be a comedy of errors. Lots of little things, all of them avoidable, but the one that broke the stack was when the camera battery died approximately two-thirds of the way through the project.

My new Fujifilm X-T5 has a much larger battery than my Fujifilm X-T3 so I never imagined it wouldn’t last long enough to create the stack.

I might have been able to salvage the stack by changing the battery without removing the camera from the focus rail, but the Manfrotto quick release plate partially blocked the battery door. Doh!

l use Arca Swiss L-brackets for all of my cameras. Good L-brackets are designed so the bracket doesn’t block any camera doors or ports. But I don’t have one for the X-T5 because it’s new enough that the selection of compatible L-brackets is poor.

I have two ways to provide continuous power for the X-T5 but I couldn’t use them because the battery door was partially blocked. Double doh!

Making lemonade from lemons

Long story short I used Helicon Focus to stack all the photos up until the power failure and the results look fairly good, as shown below. Oh what might have been. Triple doh!

ISO 400 | 80mm | 0 ev | f/8 | 1/250 s

The preceding composite image was created from 192 of 328 photos. I used a safe step size of 50 µm (microns) between photos. Each JPG photo is ~13 MB, 7728 × 5152 pixels.

The coin is acceptably in focus from the top of the coin to a point about two-thirds of the way toward the bottom. Zoom in on the horse’s head and you should notice sharp focus is lost beginning below its eye.

The amount of detail in the composite image is astounding, as shown in the close-up of the upper-right quadrant.

Close-up, upper-right quadrant.

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Focus bracketing and focus peaking

Focus peaking can be used to visualize areas of a photograph that are acceptably in focus. This can be especially helpful when creating focus stacked composite images.

I recorded two videos that show simulated focus bracketing using my NiSi NM-200 manual focus rail. Notice how the focus peaking band moved across the subject from back-to-front as the carriage moved along the lead screw of the focus rail. The videos aren’t rock steady because I was turning the larger adjustment knob as I was recording the HDMI output from two of my Fujifilm X Series digital cameras.

The subject in both videos is a quarter, that is, a 25-cent coin in U.S. currency. President Theodore Roosevelt is shown on one side of the coin.

The diameter of a quarter is 24.257 mm (0.955 inches). The APS-C sensor used in Fujifilm X Series digital cameras is 23.5 mm x 15.7 mm. A good indicator of the magnification is how much of the quarter is visible in the photo frame.

Fujiffilm X-T3 camera plus Laowa 25mm Ultra Macro lens

The following YouTube video shows a simulation of focus bracketing using a Fujiffilm X-T3 digital camera plus Laowa 25mm Ultra Macro lens. Focus peaking (shown in red) helps to highlight areas of the image that are acceptably in focus.

Video of Roosevelt quarter at 2.5x magnification using an aperture of f/4.

Fujiffilm X-T5 camera plus Fujinon 80mm macro lens

The next YouTube video shows a simulation of focus bracketing using a Fujiffilm X-T5 digital camera plus Fujinon 80mm macro lens. Focus peaking (shown in red) helps to highlight areas of the image that are acceptably in focus, same as in the preceding video. Although it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, I set the lens aperture to f/4, like the X-T3/Laowa macro rig.

Video of Roosevelt quarter at 1x magnification using an aperture of f/4.

Safe step size and focus banding

After watching the preceding videos, I think it should be clear why macro photographers use focus bracketing to create focus stacked composite images that show more depth of field than is possible from a single photo.

Focus peaking helps to highlight areas of an image that are acceptably in focus. Focus banding occurs when there isn’t enough overlap between the areas that are in focus from one image to the next. This is why it’s critically important to calculate the safe step size BEFORE you begin a focus stacking project.

Tech Tips

The following YouTube video shows how to set my Fujifilm X Series cameras for “clean HDMI” video output. Sometimes it’s helpful to turn “ON” the info display, for example, when creating “how to” videos like this one. You can see my camera settings at the beginning and end of the video.

Video of Menu settings for “clean HDMI.”

A micro-HDMI cable was used to connect my cameras to a MacBook Air (13″, M1, 2020) laptop computer via an inexpensive HDMI Video Capture adapter (HDMI to USB). I used Apple QuickTime Player (free) to record the HDMI video output from my cameras.

Open Apple QuickTime Player. File / New Movie Recording. Click the down arrow disclosure button located to the right of the red Record button and make the following settings.

• Camera = USB Video [= HDMI adapter]
• Microphone = MacBook Air Microphone [for narration, voice over]
• Quality = Maximum [1920 x 1080p, 25 fps]

Movies are recorded as .mov files.

Related Resources

• BEST Fujifilm Manual Focus Setting! by pal2tech (6:01) – FOCUS PEAK HIGHLIGHT plus Fujifilm film simulations (“Acros” Black and White)
• Understanding Fujifilm Video Recording, by pal2tech (5:11)
• Fujifilm X-T3: Focus Peak Highlight – A blog post by Walter Sanford related to, well, focus peaking.
• What is it? – A blog post by Walter Sanford related to the HDMI Video Capture adapter used to create the videos featured in this post.

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

 

Please stay tuned …

I’m working on a blog post that isn’t ready for publication. It should be finished sometime within the next day-or-so, so as the title says, please stay tuned.

Walter

Post update: What is it?

The mystery object shown in my last blog post is a macro composite image of the right eye of Benjamin Franklin, as he appears on a $100 bill. The $100 bill is the largest denomination Federal Reserve note currently issued for public circulation.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Tech Tips

2.5x magification | aperture f/4 | shutter speed 1/250 s | ISO 160

The preceding image is a focus stacked composite of 77 JPG photos taken with my Fujifilm X-T3 digital camera plus a Laowa 25mm Ultra Macro lens. The lens was set for 2.5x magnification and an aperture of f/4, the “sweet spot” for this lens.

The camera was mounted on my NiSi NM-200 manual focus rail. A safe step size of 50 microns was used in order to avoid focus banding, as determined by using Zerene Stacker DOF Calculator.

For better composition of the final composite image, I created the stack by focusing past the farthest focus point and moving the rail backward to slightly beyond the closest focus point. (Remember, the subject looks bigger at the farthest focus point than the closest. This almost certainly means it will be necessary to crop the final image if you shoot front-to-back. Going back-to-front helps to avoid this problem.)

The carriage of the focus rail traveled a total distance of 3.85 mm.

77 steps/1 x 50 microns/step = 3,850 microns

3,850 microns/1 x 1 mm/1,000 microns = 3.85 mm

77 steps is probably more than necessary but I wanted to be sure the entire image is acceptably in focus.

Helicon Focus was used to create the focus stack. The final rendering is saved as a TIF file, by default. I converted the TIF to JPG for posting in my photoblog. The final output, shown above, is unedited otherwise.

Sidebar

A micrometer (also known as a micron) equals 0.001 of a millimeter, or 1/1,000 of a millimeter. In other words, there are 1,000 micrometers in one millimeter. The symbol for micrometer is µm.

Related Resources

• Zerene Stacker DOF Calculator
• Helicon Focus – Quick Start on Mac OS, by HeliconSoft (2:20)

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

What is it?

Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages. It’s time for another exciting episode of “What is it?”

If you think you know what is shown in this photo, then please leave a comment. The answer will be revealed in a post update.

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Proof of concept: NiSi NM-200 manual focus rail

The following focus stacked composite image was created using a Fujifilm X-T3 mirrorless digital camera and Laowa 25mm Ultra Macro lens mounted on a NiSi NM-200 manual focus rail.

Toy dinosaur at 2.5x magnification.

The Laowa lens was set for 2.5x magnification and an aperture of f/4, the “sweet spot” for that lens.

The subject is a small toy dinosaur, viewed from above the anterior end of the dino. The toy is approximately 3.2 cm long (~32 mm).

The carriage of the focus rail was moved 200 µm (micrometers, also known as microns) per step, equal to 20 increments on the NiSi NM-200. A total of 28 photos were taken. A little back of the envelope math shows the carriage moved a total of 5.6 mm from beginning to end.

200 microns x 28 = 5,600 microns

5,600 microns x 1 mm/1,000 microns = 5.6 mm

The camera was set to record JPG plus RAF files. For simplicity the composite image was focus stacked in Adobe Photoshop using the JPG files straight out of the camera. The final output was slightly cropped and sharpened.

Look closely at the full size version of the composite image. I don’t see any glaring “focus banding” so the 200 micron step size seems to have worked. [See Post Update, at the end of this blog post.] As always, a sample size of one proves nothing. That said, I feel confident the NiSi NM-200 works as expected and will be a useful aid for creating macro focus stacked composite images.

Tech Tips

i used a step size of 200 microns — much larger than the 10 micron precision limit of the NiSi NM-200. My goal was to choose the largest step size that wouldn’t show “focus banding.” I’m not sure what the maximum “safe step size” is, given the settings for my photo gear, but it appears 200 microns doesn’t exceed that value.

Related Resource: “Toy dinosaur” includes a photo (shown below) that shows the entire toy. 2.5x magnification is more than it seems!

08 DEC 2020 |  BoG Photo Studio | toy dinosaur

Post Update

In the preceding post I wrote “Look closely at the full size version of the composite image. I don’t see any glaring “focus banding” so the 200 micron step size seems to have worked.”

Well, someone with more experience than me in creating focus stacked composite images actually looked closely at my image, and here’s what he saw.

Annotated image used with permission from Rik Littlefield.

Rik Littlefield, creator of Zerene Stacker, noticed there is in fact a problem with focus banding in my composite image. Rik highlighted the focus bands with a series of black dots.

My decision to use a “safe step size” of 200 microns was based upon the output from a depth of field – step size calculator that I now realize is fatally flawed. Honestly I can’t remember which calculator I used, but I can tell you this — after using Rik Littlefield’s DOF Calculator to determine the safe step size for the same macro rig is 58.038 microns, I knew 200 microns must not have worked as well as I thought. And as you can see in Rik’s annotated image, a step size of 200 microns is too big. Sincere thanks to Rik for his feedback!

Copyright © 2023 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Post update: Which family is it?

The following odonate exuvia is from a damselfly in Suborder Zygoptera.

The overall shape of the prementum (highlighted by a red rectangle) indicates this specimen is from Family Calopterygidae (Broad-winged Damselflies). Notice the embedded raindrop shape (highlighted by a purple rectangle), located toward the upper-center of the prementum — a key field mark for this family.

03 SEP 2022 | Powhatan County, VA USA | (exuvia, ventral side)

Two genera from Family Calopterygidae are common in the Commonwealth of Virginia: Hetaerina; and Calopteryx. For species in Genus Calopteryx the raindrop shape (Fig. 19) looks more like a diamond shape (Fig. 18), so it’s probably safe to infer this specimen is a species in Genus Hetaerina.

Identification Manual for the Damselfly Nymphs of Florida, p. 13

Related Resources

• Which family is it? – a blog post by Walter Sanford
• Identification Manual for the Damselfly Nymphs (Zygoptera) of Florida, by Johnny S. Richardson

Post Update: Congratulations to Doug Mills, Wally Jones, and Bob Perkins for correctly identifying the family of this exuvia.

Doug and Wally looked at the shape of the prementum. Bob looked at the antennae.

The long middle segment on the antennae is the key, found only on Calopterygidae nymphs. Nymphs of the other families have antenna segments that are progressively shorter from base to tip. Source Credit: Bob Perkins.

Looking at the prementum should enable you to identify all three families; looking at antennae works for only one family.

Copyright © 2022 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Which family is it?

An odonate exuvia was collected by Cindy Haddon Andrews on 03 September 2022 along the James River, near the Maidens Boat Landing in Powhatan County, Virginia USA. External gills (3) indicate this specimen is from a damselfly in Suborder Zygoptera.

Pattern recognition can be used to tentatively identify damselfly larvae/exuviae to the family level: the shape of the prementum is characteristic for each of the three families found in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States of America.

Your mission, should decide to accept it, is to identify the family to which the following damselfly exuvia belongs.

03 SEP 2022 | Powhatan County, VA USA | (exuvia, ventral side)

The camera lens was manually focused on the prementum, located near the anterior end of the exuvia.

Here is the same photo rotated 90° clockwise.

03 SEP 2022 | Powhatan County, VA USA | (exuvia, ventral side)

If you think you know the family, then please leave a comment. The correct answer will be revealed in a post update.

Related Resource: How to Identify Damselfly Exuviae to Family – a photo-illustrated identification guide by Walter Sanford.

Copyright © 2022 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Archilestes grandis exuvia (female)

An odonate exuvia from a Great Spreadwing damselfly (Archilestes grandis) was collected by Edgar Spalding at a small private pond in Middleton, Wisconsin USA.

SEP 2022 | Middleton, WI | Archilestes grandis (exuvia, ventral side)

External gills (3), highlighted by a blue rectangle in the following annotated image, indicate the exuvia is from a damselfly in Suborder Zygoptera.

The camera lens was manually focused on the prementum, located near the anterior end of the exuvia (highlighted by a red rectangle). The overall shape of the prementum indicates this specimen is from Family Lestidae (Spreadwings); the unique shape of the palpal lobes (highlighted by a purple rectangle) indicates Genus Archilestes.

There are two species in Genus Archilestes in North America: Archilestes californicus; and Archilestes grandis. I think it’s reasonable to infer this individual is A. grandis since Wisconsin is far out of range for A. californicus.

SEP 2022 | Middleton, WI | Archilestes grandis (exuvia, ventral side)

This individual is a female, as indicated by the rudimentary ovipositor located on the ventral side of its abdomen, near the posterior end (highlighted by a green rectangle in the preceding annotated image).

Related Resources

• How to Identify Damselfly Exuviae to Family, by Walter Sanford
• A Beginners’ Guide to Identifying the Exuviae of Wisconsin Odonata to Family, by Freda van den Broek and Walter Sanford.
• Sexing odonate exuviae (Zygoptera), by Walter Sanford

Copyright © 2022 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.