Inside a paperweight

GardenersHelper

In Memoriam
Messages
6,344
Name
Nick
Edit My Images
Yes
This was an experiment I have been meaning to do for a while. The subject is a glass paperweight that is one of my wife's favourite possessions. I have tried to photograph it before, using single shots, but was not really happy with the results. To my delight, my wife was rather pleased this time round.

I used an Olympus 60mm macro on a tripod-mounted Panasonic G80 to capture sets of natural light focus bracket images, the closest set being almost 1:1. I set the camera to capture 200 images for each bracket set at f/2.8, with an increment of +3 between shots (on a scale of +1, successive shots very close together, to +10, relatively far apart), with the focus sequence running outwards from close to far. I used manual focus and set the focus to a bit nearer than anything I wanted to focus on. I let the capture run until it had obviously passed the furthest thing I wanted in focus, or for the full 200 shots. I shot JPEG as the G80 buffer only holds 45 or so raw files and exceeding that would have slowed the capture process down too much for my taste.

I loaded each bracket set into Helicon Focus and removed the images that were in front of and beyond what I was interested in. I used the stacking method and number of images shown below for each scene. I exported the stacked images as JPEG and did various global and local adjustments to them in Lightroom.

There are 1300 pixel high versions in this album at Flickr.

#1 - 168 images, Depth Map method


1263 1 2017_12_14 Paperweight 1 FB 168i F2.8 (B,Radius4,Smoothing2) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2 - 54 images, Pyramid method


1263 2 2017_12_14 Paperweight3 FB 54i F2.8 (C) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


#3 - 42 images, Depth Map method


1263 3 2017_12_14 Paperweight4 FB 42i F2.8 (B,Radius4,Smoothing2) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4 - 87 images, Depth Map method


1263 4 2017_12_14 Paperweight5 FB 87i F2.8 (B,Radius4,Smoothing2) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5 - 99 images, Pyramid method


1263 5 2017_12_14 Paperweight6 FB 99i (C) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6 - 90 images, Pyramid method


1263 6 2017_12_14 Paperweight7 FB90 F2.8 (C) LR6 1300h
by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 



What's that Nick…
You're into astrophysics now? :confused:

Out of this world, really! :cool:
 
Reminds me of some scenes from Barbarella ~ kind of sci-fi retro....................very effective and unusual macro subject and imagery :)
 
Cool shots nick
 
Very impressive Nick! Amazing colours and detail. Well worth the effort.

Reminds me of some scenes from Barbarella ~ kind of sci-fi retro....................very effective and unusual macro subject and imagery :)

Cool shots nick

Thanks all.

I was surprised these came out as well as they did. My previous experiments with stacking were plagued with issues, especially halos, but also noise and posterisation in backgrounds. Some of these problems took ages to sort out (more or less, often not with 100% effectiveness if you looked closely) and some of them defeated me completely. In contrast I didn't do any work on halos for these (I might have missed some of course. To be honest I didn't scrutinise them in great detail - I was rather knocked out by the overall effects).

As far as halos go I think it is very dependent on the geometry of the scene - perhaps there are simply not many cases in these scenes of something that I want in focus being in front of and at a bit of a distance from something else that I want in focus; that is where I had the worst problems with halos. There were some other sorts of halo issues too though, and I didn't notice any of them either with these.

It's all a bit mysterious to me - very hit and miss for reasons I don't really understand for the most part.

There is noise very visible in the backgrounds of some of these when looked at 100%, but hopefully it isn't intrusive at my 1300 pixel high display size. After I had done these I had second thoughts - I probably should have applied a bit of noise reduction, but at that stage I didn't want to go back through the bureaucracy involved in changing them. (Multiple backups in different places etc.) Laziness really.
 
Nice stuff Nick.
 
very nice series
 
Back
Top