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I'm over in Spain at the moment, and going a bit stir crazy knowing my garden will be now filling up with plenty of bugs for me to find, yet I can't get to them. I'm in the city centre and the only flowers I have easy access to are on a small balcony. The soil in the pots is bone dry and I don't have much hope of finding life in there. There is a tiny little spider that has spun it's web on one of the plants, but I haven't yet had the motivation to try to capture it. I went to the park a couple of days ago (without my camera) and again there wasn't much around. I did see some ants on the trunk of a large tree, but that was it. The problem is it is so sunny and there is a distinct lack of humidity in the air, everything in too dry and bright!
Never mind, I'm working myself up to an early morning bug hunt along the side of the river. I just need to plan an early night and try not to drink quite so much beer before bed
Anyway, after seeing so many great posts here (isn't this area of the forum amazingly active at the moment??) I couldn't sit by any longer so got my kit together and went exploring the apartment last night. I spied a small dark streak on the ceiling that turned out to be this moth:
Indian Meal Moth by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
This is a far from perfect stack, but I took solace in the fact I was stood on a chair, with my arms above my head and trying to shoot with the camera upside-down to get a good angle. I managed about 9, but also incorporated a couple of images I took at a higher aperture.
Perhaps more interesting is what I saw when comparing the images close up. Below is a not-very-scientific comparison of the same area at different apertures. Hopefully it is apparent that there is more detail at a lower F Stop (and you can make out the distinctive toothed scales towards the lower potion of the image which I thought was pretty cool).
Indian Meal Moth - Aperture comparrison by Tim.Garlick, on Flickr
I was beginning to wonder if this stacking lark was worth all the extra effort, time and hassle, so it was nice to see a clear demonstration of why it is useful. I have my doubts that diffraction is really as big an issue as is made out, and maybe we shouldn't worry too much about it; but seeing this I believe there is some truth to the matter.
At full size the differences become less noticeable and we are back to the question of "is it good enough?" Quite often, images can look better without stacking when fine detail is not so apparent, and this is probably more true at lower magnifications. For me though, I think I'll always try to get as much detail crammed in as possible, and will persevere with my stacking technique to try to improve. Although it is certainly not appropriate much of the time (you'll likely fail to get any action or interesting behaviour shots when stacking), I think it is a good skill to have, and great to be able to pull out of the bag when needed. Plus it's very challenging which is all part of the fun
Never mind, I'm working myself up to an early morning bug hunt along the side of the river. I just need to plan an early night and try not to drink quite so much beer before bed
Anyway, after seeing so many great posts here (isn't this area of the forum amazingly active at the moment??) I couldn't sit by any longer so got my kit together and went exploring the apartment last night. I spied a small dark streak on the ceiling that turned out to be this moth:
Indian Meal Moth by Tim.Garlick, on FlickrThis is a far from perfect stack, but I took solace in the fact I was stood on a chair, with my arms above my head and trying to shoot with the camera upside-down to get a good angle. I managed about 9, but also incorporated a couple of images I took at a higher aperture.
Perhaps more interesting is what I saw when comparing the images close up. Below is a not-very-scientific comparison of the same area at different apertures. Hopefully it is apparent that there is more detail at a lower F Stop (and you can make out the distinctive toothed scales towards the lower potion of the image which I thought was pretty cool).
Indian Meal Moth - Aperture comparrison by Tim.Garlick, on FlickrI was beginning to wonder if this stacking lark was worth all the extra effort, time and hassle, so it was nice to see a clear demonstration of why it is useful. I have my doubts that diffraction is really as big an issue as is made out, and maybe we shouldn't worry too much about it; but seeing this I believe there is some truth to the matter.
At full size the differences become less noticeable and we are back to the question of "is it good enough?" Quite often, images can look better without stacking when fine detail is not so apparent, and this is probably more true at lower magnifications. For me though, I think I'll always try to get as much detail crammed in as possible, and will persevere with my stacking technique to try to improve. Although it is certainly not appropriate much of the time (you'll likely fail to get any action or interesting behaviour shots when stacking), I think it is a good skill to have, and great to be able to pull out of the bag when needed. Plus it's very challenging which is all part of the fun
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