Elephant Hawkmoth Caterpillar

Always exciting to find these very large caterpillars in the garden - feeding on the Greater Willowherb. I decided to practise my focus stacking on them. I used pegs to hold a branch of the plant upright and away from the plant to give a simple background. The first stack is 30 images with an LED continuous light at the front - not enough to have the flower in focus as well the caterpillar; the second is 45 images and has the light a bit further away and from the top so the stem is now defined

Pasque Flowers

 The recent cold, dry and windy weather has resulted in quite a lot of damage to the Pasque flowers this year but still a delight to see and photograph. This was our first RPS Nature Group outing since November so good to see Members can still get down to the task in hand. The weather was very cold and windy though the sun did come out later in the morning.Taken with 80mm Fuji Macro (first 6 images, the first three being focus stacks) and with Compact camera (last 4)

Close Up on Spiders and Beetles

The top of our plastic storage bins attracts lots of invertebrates as it warms quickly in the sun. Here a Zebra Jumping Spider pursues an Ant-like Flower Beetle plus Red mite, 22- and 20-spot Ladybirds plus a nearby Rosemary Beetle. Images 1, 2,  5, 6 and 9 are focus stacks of 10 images each, handheld.

Close Up on Lichens Reveals Purple Springtail

I spent a couple of sunny hours photographing lichens in our churchyard using close-up filter and focus stacking. I was surprised to see a purple trail across one finished stack and found it was caused by a minute purple organism that had walked across the frame during exposure. Unfortunately with 1/15 second exposure it isn't totally sharp.  I later identifed this as Vertagopus arboreus about 2mm long and a member of the Collembola, or Springtails, one of the largest groups of insect-like organisms found in the soil. A close relative of silverfish, these arthropods include over 6000 separate species world-wide. They are no longer considered insects but remain arthropods for classification purposes.

Focus-Stacked Mosses and Fungi

The first four images are Focus Stacks using a 50mm macro lens and the automatic focus bracketing of my Fuji camera. Depending on how deep the stack needs to be, I varied the number of images in the bracket - the first image has 76 images in the stack; the rest used 35 images. The final two two are straight shots. 

Focus Stacking Fungi - Comparison with Wide Angle etc

Apologies for more fungi but they are very useful for trying out focus stacking as they do not move! I used a 50mm macro and in-camera focus bracketing for taking the stack (25 or 35 shots), processed with Zerene stacker (not tidied up at processing stage so some imperfections evident on the final image), 

Mostly I used the traditional F2.8 for the images but image 2 is F8 giving a bit more background details, images 6 and 8 are wide angles (12mm) to compare the results and the final image demonstrates that, for some subjects, a much large stack number is required at the macro level.

Wasp Spiders - Focus Stacking Exercise

I must admit to being somewhat addicted to finding these impressive spiders and then trying to photograph them accurately. So when after 2 hours in the field rain stopped play, I found I had 25 or so photostacks (20 or 30 images per stack) occupying a lot of disk space. Of these 9 stacked OK in Zerene Stacker and here are six different views of three different individuals. It was quite breezy and the spider does tend to vibrate in the web if it senses an intruder so not surprised at low hit rate