If that is alive I assume it's moving a bit and to do a 30 image stack (never used this technique and don't know much about it ) wouldn't every frame have to be perfectly aligned ? If so it begs the questions,
How did you manage it handheld and....
How do you train a centipede to hold still for that length of time ?
P.S. That MP-E doesn't half extend by the way. Isn't that a real pain for close work ?
Good questions! Indeed there is usually movement between frames through both my hands moving and the subject moving. Fortunately there are ways around this! I use a program called Zerene to help me stack images. Have a look at this example stack of a jumping spider I shot last year:
It was munching on another spider, so there was a lot of movement up front, but it's probably also why I was able to get up close and do the stack. If you look around the edges (particularly the right hand and lower edge of the frame) you'll see a "border" of straight lines that comes and goes as I move through the images. This is where the program has aligned the images (based on key features around the subject) and then extrapolated out to fill in the bits that don't cover the frame. Usually you can just crop these out, but sometimes you can make use of one or two individual frames and overlay them back in.
For the subject movement, zerene has a nice feature where you can "repaint" in areas from the individual frames onto the final stack (
see here for more info). Fortunately, I only needed a couple of frames with the spider in the same position to get the front pedipalps in focus, so I was able to "paint" over these areas to tidy up the stack (I obviously have to do this a fair bit, and even if the subject hasn't moved, sometimes fine detail such as hairs, aren't fully aligned and get duplicated. It's a fair bit of work but worth the effort).
This was what I was able to salvage:
2014-03-09-18.38.52 ZS retouched - 7 by
Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
Back to the centipede. It had retreated to what it though was a safe place. I think it also kept still for a while to try to avoid being seen again. It did a better job of keeping still than I did, as I ended up cropping a fair bit, but only had to make a few edits to the final stack, mainly to the right front legs. Surprisingly the antenna kept pretty still, usually these are waving about all over the place and you have to do loads of editing on them or stack then separately then merge them back in with the image. Many insects will keep still after chasing them around for a while, or you'll just encounter the odd individual who will stop and pose for you. Persistence is key though! If you can get up early enough, before the sun hits them, that helps too.
As regard to the MP-E extending, I'm used to it by now so it doesn't bother me much. You obviously lose light as you increase magnification (and diffraction becomes more pronounced) so I usually open up the aperture. When fully extended I'm usually looking at something low on the ground so can rest my hands on the ground and place the lens barrel on my hand. This helps with the stability and you quickly learn to look for things to support yourself with! On it's own though it's fine; It's when you start adding extenders and extension tubes that it becomes more unwieldy.
HTHs