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DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
mhedges
Super Member
mhedges
Super Member
mhedges
Super Member
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
mhedges
Super Member
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
A lightning storm rolled through last night, one that's fairly rare around here. I saw one similar to it last year but that was was probably 30 - 40 miles away. The vast majority of the lightning was high in the clouds as opposed to land strikes, of which I only saw a few at very long distances. You could see the storm approach from 60 miles away, and the lightning was constant.
It also somewhat renders the method I use at night for taking pictures of lightning somewhat ineffective. I set the camera up to take 20 second exposures in a loop until I stop it. Generally you'll only see one strike in that duration, but when there are multiple strikes, it creates something of an echo effect in the clouds.
Overall, I didn't really get anything noteworthy, although a few are ok.
It also somewhat renders the method I use at night for taking pictures of lightning somewhat ineffective. I set the camera up to take 20 second exposures in a loop until I stop it. Generally you'll only see one strike in that duration, but when there are multiple strikes, it creates something of an echo effect in the clouds.
Overall, I didn't really get anything noteworthy, although a few are ok.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
Drag race
ImAnonymous
New Member
These are a few of my favorites from the past few months.
I've been working on my macro photography project. I'm still trying to figure this out, and when you're working with objectives that are 50X, things get way more complicated than even 10X. 10X is a cakewalk compared to what I'm working on now.
This is a Monarch butterfly wing. You'll probably not see the scales, which are called chitin, with your naked eye. They're tiny to say the least.
When shooting with high magnification objectives, what worked before regarding lighting does not work. You have to rethink how you go about positioning flashes and how light is concentrated on the subject. Ideally, I'd like to use lights as opposed to flashes, but I'm working on that. Equipment is coming for vibration isolation. The reason I don't use lights now is that for the exposure times the subject will move around too much due to vibrations transmitted into the subject. You need a huge amount of light in a very tiny spot with an insane adjusted F number. I think what I'm using now is in the range of F50 as I recall, maybe higher. It's not adjustable, what I mean about adjusted, or rather what is actually referred to as effective, is a calculation used on objectives. The depth of field on this objective is .9 micrometers, or 0.000035433 inches.
I've been working on improving the clarity and detail. This shot is way overboard on the backlighting, but the things I like about it is it the detail. I can see the edges of the chitin which show a jagged pattern, something I haven't been able to do before - most of the time that was due to diffraction and/or aberration issues.
I've been working on a setup that I hope will help, although this is just a test setup. I'll come up with something more permanent if I get the bugs worked out.
This is a crappy shot I took of it. You can see the Monarch wing in there. I'm using one flash from the rear with a piece of black heavy stock paper to eliminate the backlight so the light hits the paper in front and reflects back into the front of the wing facing the objective. I've found that the black paper was a bit too effective. I still need some backlighting to make this work.
I switched to Thorlabs SM2 tubes from the Nikon PB-6 bellows I was using.
Here's another shot where I used a stack of several pieces of white paper behind the wing. It's close, but not quite what I want.
I'll get there. You really need to have an understanding of light far beyond conventional photography. I found there is a way to add inline lighting to the tube where it actually provides light to the subject through the objective. That will work for highly reflective subjects, but those that are diffuse as they're called it will not. Most of what I shoot are diffuse. Diffuse meaning the subject will scatter the light rather than reflect it back into the objective.
This is a Monarch butterfly wing. You'll probably not see the scales, which are called chitin, with your naked eye. They're tiny to say the least.
When shooting with high magnification objectives, what worked before regarding lighting does not work. You have to rethink how you go about positioning flashes and how light is concentrated on the subject. Ideally, I'd like to use lights as opposed to flashes, but I'm working on that. Equipment is coming for vibration isolation. The reason I don't use lights now is that for the exposure times the subject will move around too much due to vibrations transmitted into the subject. You need a huge amount of light in a very tiny spot with an insane adjusted F number. I think what I'm using now is in the range of F50 as I recall, maybe higher. It's not adjustable, what I mean about adjusted, or rather what is actually referred to as effective, is a calculation used on objectives. The depth of field on this objective is .9 micrometers, or 0.000035433 inches.
I've been working on improving the clarity and detail. This shot is way overboard on the backlighting, but the things I like about it is it the detail. I can see the edges of the chitin which show a jagged pattern, something I haven't been able to do before - most of the time that was due to diffraction and/or aberration issues.
I've been working on a setup that I hope will help, although this is just a test setup. I'll come up with something more permanent if I get the bugs worked out.
This is a crappy shot I took of it. You can see the Monarch wing in there. I'm using one flash from the rear with a piece of black heavy stock paper to eliminate the backlight so the light hits the paper in front and reflects back into the front of the wing facing the objective. I've found that the black paper was a bit too effective. I still need some backlighting to make this work.
I switched to Thorlabs SM2 tubes from the Nikon PB-6 bellows I was using.
Here's another shot where I used a stack of several pieces of white paper behind the wing. It's close, but not quite what I want.
I'll get there. You really need to have an understanding of light far beyond conventional photography. I found there is a way to add inline lighting to the tube where it actually provides light to the subject through the objective. That will work for highly reflective subjects, but those that are diffuse as they're called it will not. Most of what I shoot are diffuse. Diffuse meaning the subject will scatter the light rather than reflect it back into the objective.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
Wow--nice report. You are definitely at the bleeding edge. Very interesting!
