Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

A few weeks ago, these Four Lined Plant Bugs (Poecilocapsus lineatus) and their smaller nymphs started munching on a patch of feral spearmint that is growing along the side of my yard. More recently they have taken up on of the Gray Coneflower that is one of the core plants in my little wildflower garden. So, I grabbed a few of them to use for photos: 

This was a real bear to photograph! I worked through a few specimens over the course of several days, experimenting with different optics, lighting setups and stacking / post processing techniques. Having multiple identical subjects allowed me to take the time to systematically work through various alternatives - though this subject was a little far gone in this final stack.

This was taken at roughly 5.5x lifesized. I worked through a few specimens and initially tried a couple different 28mm lenses reverse mounted on extension tubes. I first tired an older Ricoh XR Rikenon 28mm f2.8 and then a Pentax SMC A 28mm f2.8. In both cases, the optical quality was good but not excellent. I then switched over to using a reverse mounted Pentax DFA 50mm f2.8 and increased the extension by adding a bellows to the tubes. Obviously, I had to double the extension to get comparable magnification, and so the setup (close to 300 mm of extension) was pretty awkward to work with, but not as bad as I expected. Illuminating the subject purely by flash helped minimize any motion blur that was taking place.

The insect's very shiny wings were another challenge - the first several photographs had intense hot spots on those shiny wings. These were finally tamed by filtering the flash first through a DIY diffuser (a slightly opaque sheet of plastic) a few inches from the flash head and then through a sheet of copier paper. The second flash, used for fill, was bounced off a piece of 8 x 10 mat board.  The main flash was above the subject, slightly to the right and the fill light was slightly below the subject and hard to the right.

This subject was over 48 hours old by the time I made the switch to the 50mm lens, and just as I was starting the first stack a slight nudge of the now dried insect resulted in the front legs falling off, leaving only the first leg segment attached to the body. I was pretty tired of this bug by then and just continued shooting, but have cropped the image by about 30% to hide the missing legs and also some of the edge artifacts from the stacking process. There are other signs of wear on the specimen as well.

All in all this was a lot of work with a subject that seemed to grow less interesting with each passing hour - but I learned some new things that hopefully will be put to good use with other subjects in the future.

This final image was made with a Pentax K3, DFA 50mm f2.8 macro reverse mounted on on approximately 300mm of extension. 55 stacked images - Zerene Stacker, PMax and DMap methods blended and retouched in Photoshop CS6.

Another portrait of the Ornate Snipe Fly, Chrysopilus ornatus, made in the same session as the prior image of this fly's eyes.

 Made with the same setup as the previous image. Twenty seven combined images. 

Aside from its impressive eyes, this Snipe Fly had stiking silver and black bands along its abdomen - click on the image for a larger view: 

I would tentatively identify this as an Ornate Snipe Fly, Chrysopilus ornatus. About 3.5x clifesized, 162 stacked exposures. Pentax K-3 with DFA 50mm macro reverse mounted on extension.

Reference image:

An Ermine Moth (family Yponomeutidae). These moths get their name from their resemblance of their white fur to ermine, the white fur worn by aristocrats. Ermine is the winter fur of a stoat, which is a kind of weasel. 

I really wanted to get more detail in the eyes, but they seem to just drink up all of the light that shines into them.

 A beetle, perhaps a longhorn beetle (family Cerambycidae),  taken at about 4x lifesized. Click on the image for a larger / more detailed view.

I tried a different technique with this image. Instead of making a single pass at the subject, trying to take a hundred or more exposures to be stacked together, I  took a more relaxed approach and took only 20 to 40 photos in any single pass, but took five passes at the subject. I then stacked each of those 5 passes in Zerene stacker, using the two methodologies that it supports. That gave me 10 output image which were tan stacked together in Photoshop.  All in all, 140 images total were combined, though through 5 intermediary stacks.

My thought was that with the basic, manually controlled focus stacking rail that I use, I could never successfully get enough overlapping images without missing some areas - and gaps between exposures have been a recurring problem in recent images. By taking multiple low sample passes at the subject I am basically betting that the out of focus areas won't land in the same place on all of the images, and by taking 5 images like this it pretty much assures that any point on the subject will be sharp in at least one exposure.

It seems to have worked! I'll be trying more with this in the future.

Basic info - made with Pentax K-3 and DFA 50mm f2.8 macro reverse mounted on extension for approximate magnification of 4x lifesized.

Here is a reference photo of the full specimen:

Visiting the Allegan Forest a few days ago, I stumbled into a section that apparently was subject to a prescribed burn sometime in the past few weeks. (I'm guess it was a controlled burn since several were conduncted in the spring and it is confined to a precrise area.)

Some interesting scenes of the trees, especially along the edge between the burned woods and the green woods not subject to the fire. Click on the images for larger views:

After the Burn

 

After the Burn

 

After the Burn

 

After the Burn

 

After the Burn  

Since first embracing studio stacked macro photos a few months ago, I've been working on technique and also trying to explore avenues to get to higher magnifications. So today's test is of the Otamat 10mm f1.7 microfiche reader lens. A few days ago I posted on tests with the Otamat 20mm f1.7 lens, including an image taken at 5.5x lifesized. For this exercise, I used the shorter lens (which of course means greater magnification on extension) and tried to push up to 8x lifesize.

Here is a portrait of a wasp (I think it is a Braconid Wasp) taken with the 10mm lens mounted on a pair of short extension tubes:

This photo has some obvious flaws, but its a big step forward from my few past attempts at this level of magnification, so I'll take encouragement from that.

Here's the full subject mounted on a pin with crazy glue (click on the iamge for a larger view): 

One interesting note - this stack was compiled in Photoshop CS6, not Zerene stacker. I initially stacked these images in ZS but was not satisfied with the results - lots of wierd artifacts in some areas of the image - and so I reverted to Photoshop. It did take many hours to stack just 50 images but the results were worthwhile.

Earlier this spring I kept an eye on some tiny flowers that grew up in the cracks between bricks near my house. The flowers were at the end of fairly long stems, and when they opened were just a few millimeters in size. However, they were pretty uninteresting and did not look like a good macro subject, so I passed them by. A few days ago I took another look, and found that the now fading plants with tiny seed pods where each flower had been. The empty seed pods had an interesting shape... Here's a photo of one (click on the image for a larger view):

 This particular pod was 5mm in dimension, the image was taken at approximately 3x lifesized with a 50mm macro lens reverse mounted on extension. Thirty nine stacked images.