Focus Stacking a few September Flowers

During my one visit to the botanic garden in September I found myself rather disappointed.  Everything was beginning to look a bit ragged. I was nevertheless pleased with these images.
These flowers were photo stacked with between 5 and 12 images.  Whoops, the first one is a wild geranium and it is a single shot.

The lens used is an Olympus 12-100 (24-200mm equiv) F4 zoom.  The camera is my aging Olympus E-M1.  All were done at base ISO 200 and aperture was wide open at F4. All were hand held. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/250 to 1/640. Images were merged and edited in Lightroom Classic.

Wild Geranium (one image)

Phlox (12 images)

Verbana (5 images)

Marigold (9 images)

Anenome (10 images)

Photo Stacking for June Flowers

I did a lot of focus bracketing and stacking in June. Most of the 18 flower images below were taken at a local arboretum and a local botanic garden.  A few were in our yard.  I used mFT camera bodies by Olympus (E-M1) and Panasonic (GX80/85).  Most were taken with the Olympus 60mm macro lens.  Some were taken with the Olympus 12-100mm zoom.  

Both my Olympus and Panasonic cameras have a focus bracketing feature that allows me to focus on the closest part of the flower with the first shot, followed automatically by sequentially further-focused shots.  The beauty of this feature is that this is done with one press of the shutter and at a speed of approximately 10 frames per second.

May's images and post about photo stacking flowers mentioned I had assembled the May images using Zyrene Stacker. In June I instead used photoshop, and I prefer the results it gave me. And of course, for those who already subscribe to Photoshop and Lightroom, there is not the additional expense of buying a plug-in like Zyrene Stacker.

Basically, I find Photoshop does a better job aligning the flowers.  As a result there is rarely any ghosting, something I more than occasionally found using Zyrene Stacker.

Generally, I shot 20 images at a time, starting by focusing on the closest point of the flower.  In Lightroom I viewed each image and deleted any that were focusing further than the farthest point of the flower.  In some cases all 20 images were useable.  In one case, I only used the first seven images.

In all but two of these stacked images I shot wide open at F2.8 (60mm macro) and F4 (12-100 zoom).The two exceptions were at F4 on the macro lens.

Nine more:

With a couple of exceptions I sought hazy or cloudy days.  Light of any kind is good, but diffused light is the best!

 

A Few Flowers from the Tower Hill Botanic Garden

I found a couple of hours Sunday to take a trip to the local botanic garden. It’s called Tower Hill Botanic Garden. 

I made my trip simple by taking one camera and one lens, the EM-1 and 12-100mm F4 zoom. These images were taken at various focal lengths, at either F4 or F8. The focus bracketing and stacking feature might have helped; but again, I wanted to keep things simple. Purposely, I left the tripod at home.

[Had I remembered at the time that my Panasonic GX80/85 has a feature called “aperture bracketing”, I might have grabbed that body instead. With one press of the shutter you can get several or even all F stops. Next time!]

For each composition I shot one image at F4 and one at F8, not knowing which I’d prefer until I got back to my computer.  It’s always a compromise. Choose F4 and get a blurry-ish background that reduces distractions, or choose F8 and get more of the subject in focus due to greater depth of field. 

Native aspect ratio is 4:3 with Olympus (and Panasonic) cameras, but all of these have been cropped to a more square aspect ratio of 5:4 (as is found with a 8” x 10” print.)

Five F4 images:

Abutilon

100mm 1/250sec 800ISO

100mm 1/250sec 500ISO

50mm 1/100sec 500ISO

100mm 1/250sec 200ISO

Five F8 images:

Orchid

100mm 1/200sec 800ISO

"Ouch"

100mm 1/200sec 1000ISO

100mm 1/200 ISO3200

100mm 1/250sec 3200ISO

Camellia

100mm 1/200 2500ISO

Olympus 12-100: A Visit to the Botanic Garden

After exploring the close-up capabilites of this lens and reporting on it in several prior posts, I thought this past Saturday was a good day to try out the 12-100 at our local botanic garden.  I took only the EM-1 and only this lens. A polarizer would have been nice, but I don't yet own one big enough to fit the 72mm filter size.  That's too bad, as there are a couple of images below where I would have liked to have seen what a polarizer would have done to reduce reflected light off shiny surfaces.

Nine of the thirteen images below were shot at 100mm. One image was shot at 70mm and three others were shot at about 50mm. I used 100mm wherever I wanted maximum magnification (i.e. with this lens, that means filling the screen with a subject 3-3.5" wide).

All were shot hand-held at F4 and with focus bracketed, using the in-body focus bracket feature.  The number of bracketed shots ranged from 5 to 10 (I was experimenting) and the distance between shots was set for "3" (choices range from 1 to 10).  The next time I will set it for 10 shots and a distance of "2". A lower number decreases the distance between the chosen number of shots.

I'm especially pleased with the green and orange leaf directly below. That was the result of 10 hand-held stacked images each shot at 1/15s at 100mm (200mm equivalent).  That is quite a testament to the image stabilization system of the Olympus.  My understanding is that the stabilization of this lens on the newer model EM-1.2 is even better!

Olympus 12-100 Macros: A Few Specs and Details

My last two posts were about this awesome new addition to the Olympus lens line up, the 12-100mm F4.0 PRO zoom, and its "macro" capabilities.  Being able to zoom into a 3" subject is more of a close-up capability than a macro capability in the traditional sense of the word, but nevertheless this feature is so very helpful for such things as flower and food photography. (Though I have to say that most of my excitement about this lens for close up work is due to the snap-back manual focus ring that Olympus has seen fit to add to its PRO lenses.)

The chart below is the result of the testing I did while writing the prior two posts.

Olympus 12-100 For Macro: Six “Macro” Lenses In One

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Well, first let me explain my use of the term "macro". I believe the technical definition of a macro lens is that it creates a 1:1 magnification, typically based on the specifications of a full frame camera (i.e. a 35mm film camera or a digital camera with a 36mm wide sensor).  

I remember understanding this meaning only after visualizing a 35mm Kodachrome slide. Look at the image on an old slide, not what the image looks like in a slide viewer or when projected on a wall or screen.  The actual slide image is 36mm wide, but the cardboard mat reduces it to 35mm, or about 1.4”.  So, if a lens is able to capture, for example, a 1.4” caterpillar in such a way that the caterpillar fills the width of the slide, then this is 1:1 magnification, sometimes written as 1x magnification.

Interestingly, old macro lenses were often unable to achieve this magnification, by themselves.  They could only fill half the frame with the above mentioned caterpillar.  This is 1:2 magnification or .5x.  To accomplish a full 1:1 these old lenses usually were sold with an extension tube of about 1” in length.  It was attached between the lens and the camera body, to provide 1x magnification when desired.

The capabilities of the Olympus 12-100 do not approach 1:1, except at 12mm wide angle.  At 12mm, the equivalent magnification is about 1:1.7. In this case a 2.4” caterpillar would be needed to fill the screen!  But on the 12-100, the lens would need to be about 1/2” away from the caterpillar to get this magnification, which is not exactly practical. Even if you could get that close, the lens would likely block most of the light.

At 18-100mm, the magnification is less, at about 1:2.4. It would take a 3.4” caterpillar to fill the screen.  So, the 12-100 isn’t really a good option for true macro work.  But for general close up photography it’s pretty awesome. Coming to mind is food photography, butterflies, and flowers. 

Maybe the 12-100 is more of a quasi-macro. At any rate, this is why I put macro in quotes in the title of this post.

So let me get on with why I think there are six “macro” (note again the quotes around macro!)  lenses within this one zoom lens.  In my prior post I showed that the 1:2.4 magnification was basically available at all marked focal lengths greater than 12mm.  Those markings are for 18, 25, 35, 50, 70 and 100mm. So there you have it.  Six macro lenses starting with the 18mm (35mm equivalent) focal length and ending with the 100mm (200mm equivalent) focal length.

Which one to use?

With six focal lengths providing similar magnification, which one should you use?  The obvious answer is that it all depends and what you are trying to do.  I realize that the image examples given in the prior post were not too helpful in showing the differences realized at each focal length, as there was no background or foreground in the shots.  That’s because I was only showing how much magnification could be obtained at various focal lengths and at minimum focus distances.

Below are examples that show some background. All were hand-held.  Flash at 1/32 power. Aperture at F8. Ambient light at -2 EV. The focus point was the orange head of the fly. I tried to maintain the same camera angle by using the electronic level. All are at minimum focus distance.

18mm.  Note how stretched-out the scene is, front to back
and how wide the scene is in the background.
I see an orange pen and food shopping list in the background.

25mm.  The background is beginning to fade away.

35mm

50mm

70mm

100mm. This is a good example of the compression
of the foreground and background that is achieved with longer focal lengths.
It almost looks like the striped dishtowel was held up vertically
behind the fishing fly.