Love this, I need to get a Macro lens, oh and a camera 
A whole new world awaits those who can look closely.
Used to do a lot of macro stuff with a microscope lens and bellows set-up.
This is a image is made up from 95 photos taken at different focal planes and stitched together to give some depth of field. The 1mm scale is correct. PS: Cora’s beetle is not is proper name but who found it in a medical factory where it should not have been. I got it to ID it.
3 Likes
Thanks for sharing that amazing story Kevin, very interesting 
Amazing thank you for sharing
I use a 300mm lense coupled with macro tubes. The cheap way to do it, but the benefit is I can be a few feet away from the insects and not frighten them off. Praise to the inventor of image stabilised lenses 
I have tried a bit of focus stacking with some software I found to control the stack, pretty impressive. But I got a bit bored of it and the mini2 arrived while I was still practicing with the set up. I must try again when the weather turns and puts a dampener on flight.
2 Likes
I’ve just bought a couple of old(ish) Lumix Micro 4/3 cameras, 40 quid each, just so I can use the lenses I’ve collected to use on my Inspire 1 X5. They’re small and light, about half the size of a normal DSLR, but with all of the bells and whistles. I’m going to use them on a tripod for most of the time, due to my essential tremors, but they’re light enough to not affect me that much.
1 Like
Nice work.
I have never delved into serious macro work and admire those that do. I really enjoy photography, especially macro, nature and landscape. I was sat in my living room yesterday with the fans on and doors open, due to the heat and looked up and noticed this insect on the side of the telly. I followed this, what I think is a Grasshopper, as it made it way round the back of the screen and finally onto one of my frames on the wall. Managed to take this shot and then gently transferred it to the garden.
1 Like
Can one of you kind chaps explain the method please? Yes, I’m too lazy to search and would rather read it from someone in here.
TIA
1 Like
Nice! Have you seen the eyes of a crane-fly up very close? If not try it.
Lens, bellows, camera, on a macro rail (manual or automated). The rail is moved slightly forward between each photo (lots of photos as the depth of field is ridiculously small). Open all the images in stacking software, this merges the sharp parts of each image so you get a tiny creature in focus from front to back.
2 Likes
I have, but only hand held at about 2x, not on my table top setup… yet.
A few of my mantis pics from 16 years ago! Where does the time go? LOL
Table top set-up with tubes and not stacked.
3 Likes
Cheers for the info, I’ll have a look into it but it sounds a bit more involved than what I was doing. I have some software on a seperate laptop which I then plug my dslr into. Set the software for how many images I want captured and how far each jump will be between images. Go into live view on monitor screen to set first focus point and press start. Go drink coffee and smoke some rollups. Once the images are captured I load them into another program that creates the final image, go for another coffee and more rollups. When I get back home I’ll fire up the laptop to get the name of the software for anyone that’s interested, it’s all freeware. I did have the trial version of nikon camera control, but I found the freeware one had more control and obviously cheaper than than the paid for nikon version.
1 Like