Another Fly Shot - getting better

[NateS]

Starting to get the hang of these guys.

crop of above shot

2 image stack

I think this stack turned out even better than the first. Oh and that black dot was actually on his eye...not dust or anything on the lens.

 

[icassell]

Oh, my .... a fly with a black eye ...


These are great, Nate. I'm not sure I would want to be known among my friends as the expert in fly photography, but the images are outstanding.

 

[flea77]

Excellent, really like #2.

Allan

 

[Derrel]

Wow! What can you tell us about these hand-held focus stacking shots??? Until fairly recently I had never heard of people being able to do focus stacking on shots that were not tripod-mounted. So, what's the story? Has the software become that much better at aligning shots that are not in perfect register?

 

[NateS]

Wow! What can you tell us about these hand-held focus stacking shots??? Until fairly recently I had never heard of people being able to do focus stacking on shots that were not tripod-mounted. So, what's the story? Has the software become that much better at aligning shots that are not in perfect register?

I'm not sure I can tell you much....I've honestly only been doing it for about 3-4 days. Here's a list of things I notice about it...keep in mind I've never focus stacked via tripod so I can't compare.

1. I shoot anywhere from 10-30 shots of one position and choose 2-3 shots where the fly didn't move and the focus is on various parts.

2. I am very careful to not change my position as I don't want to change the angle of the shot since that would mess up the alignment.

3. I don't worry about composition at all...I just try to get the insect near the same part of the frame each shot (usually center).

4. When I stack, I stack using the align option first then I combine with the "Do Stack" option (using CombineZP)

5. I crop the shot for composition after they are stacked. The borders usually get stretched and distorted after the stack due to the frames not matching...I crop these sections out to focus on the insect.

6. I do any final editing back in CaptureNX2 (on the final jpeg) I actually do any further editing including the crop of the stacked image in NX2.



That's how I do it. I'm not sure if it's the normal method, but it seems to be working well for me so far.



Oh and thanks to all three of you for your kind comments.

 

[mbcreate]

That's a very crispy shot ( #2), good job!:thumbup:

 

[bigboi3]

tasty... im mean the shots. haha.

 

[Speed JUnkyz]

So these shots film or digital? I really want to get into this type of shots... What size lens?

 

[Maxim01]

What kind of lens did you use, and i love #2. The eyes are just amazing.

 

[Speed JUnkyz]

yeah lets go spill the beans lolol

 

[NateS]

Thanks guys. These are all shot on digital. It's with my D90 and a Tamron 180mm f3.5 macro lens.

 

[Speed JUnkyz]

thats great....I better start saving hahaha

 

[altitude604]

those are really cool! nice work!

 

[NateS]

those are really cool! nice work!

Thank you.

 

[camz]

OMG! Nates you need an apprentice for your macro work? I nominate myself!! lol good job on these...

Very inspiring since I've planned to get into macro.