Category Archives: Extreme Macro Lighting

Arduino, Extreme Macro Lighting, Extreme Macro Techniques

Playing With DigiSpark

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I was thinking about building a delay circuit quickly and effectively and with small footprint. The idea is to delay a signal either from a camera or from other camera triggering devices and then trigger a flash after the delay.

Beside my need to build such a circuit, it is also my goal to share it and make it DIYable. Therefore, using a small microchip came up to my mind. One such MCU is Attiny45 series by Atmel (now Microchip) as it is so popular and you can use an Arduino to program it. While searching for Attiny45, I came across something that I have forgotten — DigiSpark boards!  Continue reading Playing With DigiSpark →

Extreme Macro, Extreme Macro Lighting, Water Drop, Water Drop Lightning

Getting Clean Black Background

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Very often I encounter a beautiful image with black background but with a slight set back — the background is not as “black” as the author (and I) intended to be. And again often, you can see lots of photoshop efforts to make it black, such as spotty blobs of different shades of black, traces of black brushes, etc, but these efforts fail too frequently to wonder how to get a good clean black background!

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Extreme Macro, Extreme Macro Lighting, Extreme Macro Techniques

Analysis Of Misalignment Between Optical And Motion Axis For Focus Stacking.

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I have been asked many times about why there are streaking patterns around border of final stacked image. Well, the most common cause of these streaking patterns is due to the optical instruments used — the magnification of optical instrument changes when the distance between the subject and sensor changes. When stacking algorithm attempts to align all images, there will be mismatch of subject size. Information in one image just does not exist in another, thus stacking software often fills the final image with some arbitrary (arbitrarily chosen) pixels. However, if a telecentric optical instrument is used, due to the nature of telecentricity, there is no change in magnification, therefore there should be no or very little streaking patterns. But many still get streaking patterns even when a telecentric optical instrument is used. What gives? Here is why!

Streaking

 

Continue reading Analysis Of Misalignment Between Optical And Motion Axis For Focus Stacking. →

Extreme Macro Lighting, Extreme Macro Techniques

Hazy Stack? Watch Your Diffusion Setup.

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Admit it, you have encountered this, after so much effort capturing images for stacking and painfully waiting for stacking software to finish, you ended up with an image with a lot of haze. So much so, your skillful Photoshop tricks can’t help it. Oh OK, sometimes Photoshop does help, but I still believe to get it right at the first place.

Setup_08So what happened? What happened is that your diffusion setup is causing light beams entering your lens, causing glare and haze. read more

Extreme Macro Lighting, Extreme Macro Techniques

Diffuse Your Light, Or Else!

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OK, that sounds a bit harsh. Then again, almost every (extreme) macro photographer knows this and tries very hard to put as much diffusion as possible. Just visit any Facebook group about macro photography or any forum, you will find talks of diffusion in abundance, there are all kind of setups to diffuse light, all kind of DIY and professional equipment, there are . . . So, yeah, we get it for sure, now go away! Cool, it is almost everybody gets it, but here I am going to present you an extreme example of what would happen if you do NOT diffuse your light!  read more