Color-Loaded Trachs and Cynarinas
- Thread starter glparr
- Start date
swegyptian
New member
That's really wild!
xxwake4lifexx
Josh
Wow! :eek2:
Just wow! Those are so colorful.
Just wow! Those are so colorful.
dendronepthya
Premium Member
Are those the product of HDR?
TitusvileSurfer
New member
Wow these are breathtaking! Thank you for sharing! 
blackbeard 1
New member
very nice pics
david13579
Member
Nice shots very colorful.
Reef Bass
colors and textures
:eek1: Holy guacamole Batman, I mean, Gary! Those shots peg both my color and texture meters! I have to get off my butt and do some focus stacking. I received a megadiscount offer on PS CS4 that I couldn't pass up and it's on its way to me currently.
I notice you like 4-6 images in your focus stacked pics. Does the number depend on the overall depth / thickness / 3 dimensionality of the subject or you find that's basically enough to get the job done?
When you post process, do you stack the images and then tweak the resulting composite, or do you make tweaks to the images before stacking?
Thanks for sharing!
I notice you like 4-6 images in your focus stacked pics. Does the number depend on the overall depth / thickness / 3 dimensionality of the subject or you find that's basically enough to get the job done?
When you post process, do you stack the images and then tweak the resulting composite, or do you make tweaks to the images before stacking?
Thanks for sharing!
glparr
Waterbox Keeper
Thanks Reef Bass.
The number of images is highly dependent on the depth/thickness/dimensionality of the subject and the aperture I choose for the image. Sometimes I'll shoot with a relatively shallow DOF because I have a real junky background that I want to keep blurred. In a majority of shots. I find myself shooting in the 8-to-10-shot range (If interested, you can see other stacked images in the reef gallery on my website: www.gparr.com).
I've generated the best results by doing a batch correction of the white balance in the RAW convertor (I use the Adobe RAW convertor), then saving all of the images as tif files. Adobe's convertor will batch save, too. Helicon Focus will work with RAW files, but the results are less than impressive. Once I have the tif files, I load them in to Helicon and generate the combination file, which I also save as a tif. I use Method B (Edit, Options, Method B), with the default settings. It's that combined tif file that load into Photoshop to make Levels, Shadow/Highlight, etc. adjustments. In other words, I've found that I get the best results if I do nothing to the image set, other than white-balance adjustment, until I get the stacked image out of Helicon Focus. I hope that makes sense.
Gary
The number of images is highly dependent on the depth/thickness/dimensionality of the subject and the aperture I choose for the image. Sometimes I'll shoot with a relatively shallow DOF because I have a real junky background that I want to keep blurred. In a majority of shots. I find myself shooting in the 8-to-10-shot range (If interested, you can see other stacked images in the reef gallery on my website: www.gparr.com).
I've generated the best results by doing a batch correction of the white balance in the RAW convertor (I use the Adobe RAW convertor), then saving all of the images as tif files. Adobe's convertor will batch save, too. Helicon Focus will work with RAW files, but the results are less than impressive. Once I have the tif files, I load them in to Helicon and generate the combination file, which I also save as a tif. I use Method B (Edit, Options, Method B), with the default settings. It's that combined tif file that load into Photoshop to make Levels, Shadow/Highlight, etc. adjustments. In other words, I've found that I get the best results if I do nothing to the image set, other than white-balance adjustment, until I get the stacked image out of Helicon Focus. I hope that makes sense.
Gary
Reef Bass
colors and textures
First of all, wow! Then fabulous. Then awesome.
Yes, your explanation made sense. I appreciate your describing that.
I see how there is a great deal of depth to the original macro shot. You seem to have chosen to leave the farthest background a touch blurred, despite having stacked 9 images, yes? Or is there only so much depth stacking can handle?
Does greater DOF in each of the stacked images give greater clarity / sharpness to the resulting composite image?
Thank you for your time.
Ken
Yes, your explanation made sense. I appreciate your describing that.
I see how there is a great deal of depth to the original macro shot. You seem to have chosen to leave the farthest background a touch blurred, despite having stacked 9 images, yes? Or is there only so much depth stacking can handle?
Does greater DOF in each of the stacked images give greater clarity / sharpness to the resulting composite image?
Thank you for your time.
Ken
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glparr
Waterbox Keeper
I did not intend to have that area blurred in the bottom background of the image just posted. It was an error. I should have done one more shot in the series. Part of the learning process.
You can stack essentially as many as you want. I believe the most I've done is 24 images.
Here's the shot with 24 images stacked. Because it's a clean background, some of the funkiness that happens with the back fringe areas when you stack a lot of images is rather accentuated. It's not a very good image, but I did it just to see what would happen when I stacked that many shots. It would be better, but you tend to get polyp movement, even with these small polyps, over the period of time it takes to shoot that many images, thus the blurring.
Gary
You can stack essentially as many as you want. I believe the most I've done is 24 images.
Here's the shot with 24 images stacked. Because it's a clean background, some of the funkiness that happens with the back fringe areas when you stack a lot of images is rather accentuated. It's not a very good image, but I did it just to see what would happen when I stacked that many shots. It would be better, but you tend to get polyp movement, even with these small polyps, over the period of time it takes to shoot that many images, thus the blurring.
Gary
glparr
Waterbox Keeper
Recty, sturdy tripod and a remote release. You're right, pushing the shutter button will move the camera. A remote release is essential to this type of photography, whether you're stacking or just shooting one image. Any camera movement must be eliminated. Mirror lockup is also essential.
Gary
Gary
