Been a few months since I've made a stacked macro shot - so here's a portrait of a leaf footed bug that stumbled across my desk a few weeks ago. I spent far more time cleaning it than I care to admit, but it is still a bit dirty:
Pentax K-3, reverse mounted SMC K 24mm f3.5, approximately 4x lifesized. 59 combined exposures.
Closeup of the central swirl of an Ammonite fossil:
Made from 16 exposures focus stacked in Photoshop, magnification of approximately 1.5x lifesized.
A focus stacked macro photo of a Milkweed Bug, probably Oncopeltus fasciatu:
Collected several weeks ago when the milkweed seedpods were getting ready to open. Shot at about 4x lifesized, Pentax K01 with reverse mounted SMC K 24mm f3.5 on extension. 130 exposures in 2 stacks, combined in Zerene Stacker.
It's autumn, and time to lay in firewood for the upcoming winter months. I found this spider in my wood pile as I rotated out the remnants of last year's firewood and began stacking a newly delivered load. My best guess on identification is that this is a ground spider, family Gnaphosidae.
Since it was nestled on a piece of firewood I positioned in on a wood chip to simulate its natural environment. This portrait was made at approximately 3x lifesized and is 135 stacked images (two separate passes on the subject.)
A crested treehopper collected earlier this summer:
This would be in the family Membracidae and likely subfamily Telamona. Magnification just over 2x lifesized, 67 stacked images.
The discarded exoskeleton of an insect - probably a cicada. A little less than 1x life-sized, 271 stacked photos. Made with Pentax K01 and A*200mm f4 macro.
A hover fly, family Syrphidae:
Taken at a modest 3x lifesized, 82 stacked images. Made with a Pentax K-01, DFA 50mm f2.8 reverse mounted on extension.
Green Bottle Fly, a common fly of the genus Lucilia:
I usually learn something new with each of these super-macro sessions. The lesson in this case was that specimens do not last forever in the freezer! I have collected a green bottle fly some months ago and finally got around to preparing it for photographing a few days ago. When I got it in the camera's sights I found a dent in one of the eyes plus the cells in the compound eyes looked very irregular. Looking very closely I realized that some fo the cells int he eye had collapsed - they no longer bulged slightly outward, but rather some cells now sank back into the eye. Some cells had gone from convex to concave, and so reflected light differently and created an irregular aspect to the celll pattern of the eye. Snatching a fresh bottle fly off a leaf and photographing it a few hours after collection revealed a very regular pattern to the eyes.
So - at lease some insects must be fresh to get good results when photographed, or perhaps I need to find an alternative method of storing them.
This photo was made from 154 stacked images at approximately 5x lifesized.