Camera Labs

Took a mosaic of the whole fruit fly with each frame of the mosaic a Helicon focus stack - result:



Image processed by Noel Carboni (who does all my deep-sky image processing).

I have just ordered the lamp unit and fibre optic illuminators so I will soon be able to take photomicrographs with top-lighting.

Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/

Hi Greg,

Impressive as always. Is it at all possible to post a smallish (up to 1024 pixel) 100% crop from an area of your choosing so that we can really be gobsmacked.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Great image Greg!

Thanks guys. Good idea Bob - I'll give that a go!
Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/

Now thats cool....

Nice job.

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Pentax K-5
Pentax 18-55mm,Pentax 50-200mm,Sigma 17-70mm,Sigma 70-300mm, Sigma 50-500mm

Wow! How do you take photographs like that!?

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http://jmonday.com/

Hi jm,

Well first you need a DSLR (in my case a 40D) fitted to a decent microscope - I have a high quality trinocular biological microscope that you can find on GX microscopes.

Next - as the subject is too big for the FOV of the camera, even at the lowest magnification, you need to take a mosaic of the subject and stitch the frames together using something like Photomerge in Photoshop CS3.

Finally - each frame in the mosaic is itself is a focus stack of frames to give the huge depth of field - rather like an SEM picture. To do this you take a series of shots for each frame, with each shot focused at a different plane through the subject. Basically focus on the top of the subject and take a shot, now move the focus down a little and take another shot - carry on doing this until you are focusing on the bottom part of the subject. You may take from 10-20 separate shots to do this. You then need to stack all these focus frames together to give an image of the whole subject in focus from top to bottom. To do this I use some specialist software called Helicon Focus which you can buy over the Internet - it is great software to carry out focus stacking.

That's all there is to it really. I have used light transmission through the subject with the fruit fly shown, but you can buy a light source with fibre optic illuminators to illuminate opaque objects from the top if you want to image this sort of thing through the microscope.

Hope the above helps,
Greg

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Nexstar 11 GPS, 2 x Sky 90, M25C, MaximDL, Photshop CS3, Noel Carboni's Photoshop actions, 7 foot Pulsar fibreglass dome, Canon 40D, 100mm macro lens, 28-200mm zoom lens, 17-55mm f#2.8 zoom lens, 100-400mm zoom lens, 1.4x converter, 2x converter.
http://www.newforestobservatory.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12801949@N02/