52 photographs - Week 30

We’ve had a lot of rainy days recently so this week’s photograph is of a rain drop.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

A Focus Stacking Story…

I haven’t done macro photography for some time. Most recently I did use some extension tubes with the 12-200mm lens to do some macro photography, but it is not the best solution. 

This past week I bought the Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro lens on sale from B&H Photo. It’s a very nice small, lightweight lens. I’m having fun trying to figure out how best to use it.

It is the only lens I have that is compatible with the OM-1 in-camera focus stacking. So I thought I’d give it a try after watching a couple of YouTube videos on the subject. Ideally you should use a tripod, but if you’re steady, you can hand hold the camera to produce the in-camera focus stack.

This morning I tried the in-camera focus stack feature. The camera creates 15 jpeg images at different focus points and stacks them into a single focus stacked image.

Looking at the stacked image on the camera’s screen, I was not happy with the result.

In-Camera Focus Stack

As you can see, the bottom third of the photograph is clearly not in focus. Now I thought that it could be because it was hand held or that the settings I used were not correct.

I then used Affinity Photo and imported the same 15 separate images and used Affinity’s focus stacking feature and wow, what a difference.

Affinity Photo Focus Stack

I’ll have to do some more testing, but it looks like Affinity Photo is how I should be processing my focus stacked image.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 29

On Tuesday I thought I had the photo of the week. A wonderful image of a Carolina Chickadee just outside the front door up in a tree. I thought there’s no way I can top that. (See previous post.)

Was I wrong. Saturday morning I saw a Green Heron at Manchester Meadows Park. I’ve photographed one before at Nygren Wetlands in northern Illinois. This was the first I’ve seen here and was quite a surprise.

I wasn’t able to get very close to it and it was a dark, grey day so I had to up the ISO and use Topaz Photo AI when I processed the image. And I was very happy with the result.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

Sometimes it’s Just Luck…

Every morning my sister puts food out on the front stoop for the birds and squirrels. Occasionally I try to shoot some photographs of the birds. I’ve never been happy with the results as they usually just grab some food and take off.

The other day a Carolina Chickadee had come around but a squirrel was busy grabbing a bite to eat. Well, instead of flying off, it went up into the tree right outside the door and hung around waiting for the squirrel to take off.

So I grabbed my camera and shot some photographs through the glass storm door. Not ideal conditions, but I was very happy with the results. All photographs below were shot at high ISO and cropped. Some were cropped a bit and some cropped a lot. And all photographs were run through Topaz Photo AI to remove noise and do a little sharpening.

The full frame image

The cropped image

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 28

I had several good candidates for this week’s photographs; birds, a deer, a turtle, and a Japanese Beetle on a rose. (See following post)

But I chose this image of Blackwell Switchgrass from Manchester Meadows Park. 

I love the rich reds and greens of this photograph. I also love the way the grass flows both left and right.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

A Macro Photography Story…

Years ago, think mid 1970’s, I started shooting some macro photographs. The lens I used was the Nikon 55mm f/3.5 Micro-Nikkor. The camera, obviously a Nikon was probably a Nikon FM. And I was shooting Kodachrome 25, the absolute best color transparency ever.

My subjects were mushrooms, other fungi and wild flowers. I used natural light and sometimes used a small white card or aluminum foil to fill in shadows or just to increase the amount of light I had to work with. Here are three examples.

Recently I joined three local photographers for a macro photography outing. I no longer have a macro lens but do have 10mm and 16mm extension tubes. So I used those with my 12-200mm lens.

One of the photographers along for the adventure was shooting with a speed light mounted on her camera and a large diffusion hood attached to the speed light. Apparently that’s all the rage these days. If you’re going to shoot macro photographs, that’s a must have. Do a search on YouTube and you’ll see what I mean.

I will say that the results she got were fantastic. But to me, it seemed a bit much.

So I decided to try a somewhat different approach. I bought a small speedlight, a Godox TT350, and mounted it on my camera. I added the rectangular snap-on diffusion dome to the speedlight.

Did a few quick test shots of a flower to dial in the power setting on the speedlight and the ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop on the camera. Once that was done, I went back out and photographed a Japanese Beetle on a rose. I was quite happy with the results.

ISO 400, 1/250 @ f/11

ISO 400, 1/250 @ f/11

Now there are disadvantages to using extension tubes rather than having a macro lens. The first is that you only have a certain working distance, there is no flexibility to go in closer or further away. You could use just one of the extension rings to change the camera to subject distance, but then the degree of magnification would also change.

The second is that you cannot use that combination as a regular lens. With a macro lens, you don’t have to just shoot macro photographs. You can use it like any other lens. I’d have to remove the extension tubes in order to do that. 

But extension tubes are a very good inexpensive way to get started with macro photography.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

52 Photographs - Week 27

This week’s favorite photograph is of two turtles sunning themselves at the Manchester Meadows Park pond. I’ve been going to the park almost every morning for the past year to walk Roxie and this was the first time I’ve seen turtles there. I’m guessing it’s because the water level is low enough to expose the stone object on which they are sunning themselves.

This photograph was taken with my Olympus OM-1 and the Leica DG Vario-Elmer 100-400mm at 400mm. ISO 800, 1/320 at f/8. 

I also used the 2X Digital Teleconverter and cropped the image by about 45%. The Olympus Digital teleconverter doubles your focal length on your lens. In this example I was zoomed out to 400mm and when choosing the 2X digital teleconverter it made it a 800mm focal length. It’s amazing what the Olympus OM-1 can produce.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“

The Accidental Focus Stack…

I’ve always thought about doing a focus stacked image. For those who don’t know what that is, here’s an explination.

Focus stacking is a technique designed to achieve a deep depth of field by blending (or stacking) several images together. Each stacked shot is focused in a different spot, so the combined depth of field is deeper than the depth of field produced by any of the individual images.

There are several methods to achieve a focus stack depending on your camera body. Some cameras, like the Olympus OM-1 allows you to create the focus stacked image in camera. The OM-1 also allows you to focus bracket resulting in individual images to be stacked using software, like Affinity Photo. And you can do a focus stack by manually changing the focus point as you shoot images.

All of the above methods require a camera on a tripod for optimal results. And since I never have a tripod with me, I’ve never done a focus stack. Until today. 

All images were shot hand held.

This morning I saw a flowering plant I had never photographed. I had my OM-1 with the Leica DG Vario-Elmer 100-400mm lens. So I zoomed out to around 300mm and took a couple of shots. I reviewed the result and saw that the focus was on the far side of the plant.

It was OK but most of the plant was out of focus due to limited depth of field. So I took a couple more shots with the focus on the near side of the plant. I thought that would be OK.

But when I processed the images I still did not like the results. So I thought, why not try to see if I could focus stack these two images in Affinity Photo. I was thinking that even tho the images did not align, Affinity Photo might be able to align them.

And sure enough Affinity Photo did a good job on stacking the two images. It’s not a perfect focus stacked image, but it sure looks better than either of the two original images. Something to keep in mind for the future.

“Tri-X, f/8, and be there.“