Some images from June 2021

 It is over a year since my last post here. That is partly because, photographically, not much has changed in that period. 

• I am still using a Panasonic G9 with Olympus 60mm macro lens for botanical subjects, using aperture bracketing and using 6K video focus stacking as previously described.
• I am still using a Sony full frame camera with a pair of 2X Kenko teleconverters and a Laowa 100mm 2X macro lens for invertebrates.

At the time of the previous post I was using a Sony A7ii, which has a 24 mpix sensor. Since then I have tried a Sony A7rii, which has a 42 mpix sensor, to see if the extra pixels would help, for example giving me the option of shooting with lower magnification and then cropping, but that did not work well for me. 

I also tried a Sony A7sii, which has a 12 mpix sensor. That worked well, producing the same sort of results as the A7ii and A7rii, but with smaller raw files which were easier and quicker to handle. I have been settled on the A7sii for some time now.

I was going to do a review of early 2021 to now, posting a few examples. However I found that I have a very large number of images to look through, and I feel the need to reprocess potential candidates because my visual tastes have changed, now preferring a softer look with less aggressive processing. I got bogged down after reviewing just one month's invertebrate images and it looked like I would never get the job finished, so I have decided to post some of the images I have liked the look of so far, and post some more as and when I'm in the mood to do more reviewing and, I imagine, reprocessing.

This will somewhat disorganised in terms of dates. The one month I have worked on so far is June 2021, and here I will post some images from that month. I may then go back to the start of the year to find what I can find there.

So, some invertebrate images from June 2021, recently reprocessed using my current workflow, which generally involves starting with raw files and working on them with, in turn, DXO PhotoLab, Adobe Lightroom and Topaz DeNoise AI.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

#9

#10

2020 - A year of three techniques

 Most years almost all of my photos are close-up/macros, mainly in our garden with occasional trips to local nature reserves. This year all of them were close-up/macros. I didn't get to any of the nature reserves, so it was mainly in our garden, or at the end of the year in a very small patch of woodland next to the church opposite our house, which I had not previously sought permission to go into.

This was the year when focus-stacking from 6K video fully settled into my "toolkit" as a routine method to use with flowers, buds, berries, seed pods etc using natural light, hand-held. I used it most of the time apart from when it was particularly breezy. Here are three of them.

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#1 A stack of 78 6K video frames

#2  A stack of 189 6K video frames

#3 A stack of 39 6K video frames

I used a second hand-held, natural light technique for flowers etc - aperture bracketing. This gives me 7 shots from f/2.8 to f/22 for a single press of the shutter button. Having a set of images at different apertures lets me choose the one (or occasionally more than one) where I best like the balance between the amount of the subject that is in focus and the way the background looks. In very breezy conditions this would be the only technique I would use, with focus stacking being impractical. Otherwise I would use both video (for focus stacking) and aperture bracketing. Using both techniques several times for each subject meant that if none of the stacks worked I might still have something to work with from the aperture bracket sets. And sometimes I just prefer the look of single stills, or sometimes I only feel like shooting stills (and sometimes only videos), and for some subjects I have learnt that stacking is highly unlikely to work and so I often don't bother with video for those subjects any more.

Here are three stills that were taken from aperture bracket sets.

#4 I chose the maximum aperture f/2.8 shot for this one.

 

#5  I chose f/11 for this one. That was probably the first one in the sequence where I felt enough of the subject was sufficiently in focus for my purposes, probably referring to the yellow "fur" on the right hand petal, and that left the background better defined (more intrusive) than in the previous one. I know that many people much prefer plain backgrounds, and will for example use use plain cards behind the subject or use background replacement in post processing to produce plain backgrounds, but I'm happy with quite busy backgrounds if to my eye they complement the subject or at least don't fight too hard against it (a matter of personal visual preference of course). In fact I like the variety that less defocused backgrounds can produce. I find the relatively plain backgrounds I get from stacks a bit monotonous sometimes.

#6 And sometimes a smaller aperture is needed to get enough of the subject into focus to suit my visual preferences, which lean towards getting the whole subject in focus where practical. As well as involving a trade-off as to the look of the background, using smaller apertures can involve trade-offs involving shutter speed and ISO. I have that side of it automated now, so the camera uses base ISO as long as the shutter speed is 1/80 sec or faster (as for #4 above), and then hold the shutter speed at 1/80 sec as it increases ISO up to a maximum of ISO 3200 (as for #5 and #6), at which point (which I don't reach very often) it holds the ISO at 3200 and slows the shutter speed.

The third technique I used this year was entirely new (for me) and used with a combination of kit I had not used before, for photographing invertebrates down to 1mm or so long, hand-held, often as they move around, using single stills with flash. This involves the use of very small apertures to produce a lot greater depth of field than you normally get with single images, especially for small subjects (up to 8 times bigger than the largest depth of field I had previously been able to get). Such small apertures produce extremely soft images which need strong post processing to produce results that are usable for my purposes (which is another matter of personal preference and judgement of course).

I started experimenting with this technique in the summer and by the end of the year I had found a combination of kit I was comfortable using, which involved a 2X magnification macro lens and two 2X teleconverters to give a total maximum magnification of 8X and which let me set f-numbers up to f/90. By the end of the year I had settled on setting the f-number to around f/45 most of the time, which taking account of the magnifications I was using gave me effective f-numbers up to around f/400. And by the end of the year I had sorted out post processing to use on these extremely soft images.

#7  One of the things the extra depth of field helped me do was to get shots of highly active insects and spiders which didn't stay in one place for long and sometimes didn't stay still when they did stay in more or less the same place for a while. This first example is of modestly sized wasp which was in one place for a relatively long time as it tried to pull flesh off of a pigeon corpse, but by the end of the year I was photographing much smaller animals in the 1 to 2mm size range as they moved around.

#8 I also found that I could get much closer in on some of my favourite subjects than I had been able to previously, like this snail.

#9 And I had much more success with small subjects in the 1-2mm size range, like this springtail.

#10 And finally, something entirely unexpected turned up at the end of the year. It turned out that I could use the hand-held, flash-based, small aperture, large depth of field approach for water droplets like these. 

It has been a horrible year in so many ways for so many people. Isolated in our own little world with my wife it turned out to have some significantly positive aspects as far as my photography goes, for which I am extremely grateful.

A7ii with Laowa 100mm 2X macro and paired teleconverters

 These examples were captured using a Sony A7ii and Laowa 100mm 2X macro lens, six of them with a pair of 2X teleconverters, and four of them with one 2X teleconverter and one 1.4X teleconverter. All used a Venus Optics KX800 twin flash. The raw files were processed with DXO PhotoLab with image-specific adjustments in Lightroom and output sharpening and noise reduction using Topaz DeNoise AI.

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Full frame camera for invertebrates

 In terms of photographic equipment and technique the big change has been that I have started using a full frame camera with a manual focus macro lens to photograph invertebrates.

From 2007 to mid 2020, when photographing invertebrates I used close-up lenses mounted on fixed lens small sensor bridge cameras or on telezoom lenses on micro four thirds and APS-C cameras. With all of these I used autofocus. 

And with all of these setups I used minimum aperture so as to get as much depth of field as possible. This equated to around f/45 for full frame. This is a much smaller aperture than most people would use because of diffraction destroying fine detail at such small apertures. However, I found that with suitable post processing I could get acceptable results as long as I kept the outputs small. I settled on 1300 pixels high for images prepared for viewing on screen.

In the summer of 2020, with Coronavirus limiting me to our garden, with only a limited range of subjects, I decided to have a serious attempt at getting decent images of some very small flies on our tiny pond. I had tried before but had never managed to get satisfactory results. I spent some hours single-mindedly concentrating on them, but to no avail. Eventually I came reluctantly to the conclusion that I simply couldn't get sufficient depth of field for these tiny subjects. That was with single images. Focus stacking was impractical because the flies were hyper-active and typically flew off after one, two or not many more seconds.

The full frame Sony A7ii had been sitting on the shelf unused for months. The only subject matter I thought it suitable for was sunsets, and I hadn't been doing any of those, especially since being confined to our home and garden in the Spring.

The problem with the small flies was insufficient depth of field. I knew that when using the higher magnification that was needed for smaller subjects I could get greater depth of field if I used a macro lens, extension tubes, teleconverters, bellows and/or reversed lenses. This is because the effective aperture gets progressively smaller as the magnification goes up, according to the approximate formula:

Effective f-number = Nominal f-number * ( 1 + magnification )

where "Nominal f-number" is the f-number you set on the camera/lens. So for example if you use f/l6 at a magnification of 3:1 then the Effective f-number you are using (which is what determines the depth of field) is

f/ ( 16 * ( 1 + 3 ) ) 

which is around f/64.

In contrast, I was limited to f/45 with all my close-up lens setups because the effective aperture does not change with magnification when using close-up lenses.

So, by using effective apertures smaller than f/45 I would be able to get greater depth of field. That would be good for the small flies, although with apertures even smaller than f/45 the loss of detail from diffraction would be even more serious, so much so that the images might be unusable. Based on a very brief experiment some years previously that is what I believed would be the case. However, since I had the necessary kit, and having plenty of time on my hands and not much by way of subjects to photograph, I thought I would see what happened if I tried using even smaller apertures to photograph the tiny flies.

I had various kit I could use, including a Laowa 25mm macro lens that went from 2.5X to 5X magnification. It was a Canon EF mount lens, so I could use it on my Canon 70D dSLR, but I also had adapters so I could use it on the A7ii and on my micro four thirds cameras. I tried all three. Here it is shown on the Canon 70D.

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The screen on the A7ii gave me a clearer view of what was going on than the other cameras, and that was important as the Laowa 25 mm macro is manual focus only, so I needed to have as good a view as I could. Also, the A7ii gave me a stronger focus peaking signal than my micro four thirds Panasonic G9, which also made it better for manual focusing (and the 70D didn't have focus peaking). So the A7ii turned out to handle best for me.

To my surprise I was ok with manual focus. The failure rate was high, but I wasn't surprised by that given how small and how active the subjects were, and I don't think autofocus would have been any better. And most important, where the focus did fall in the right place, the image quality looked to be better than I had managed with any of my close-up lens setups. This is one of the early shots that convinced me that this tiny aperture approach might work for small subjects. This one was captured with the A7ii and Laowa 25mm macro.

This led on to a number of experiments with various cameras, lens arrangements and flash setups. As I tried various lenses and combinations of lenses and teleconverters I came to realise that not only did the tiny aperture approach work for small subjects, but it could give me better results with larger subjects too. Here are some examples from the test sessions. These two were captured with a Sigma 105mm macro lens and 2X teleconverter on the A7ii. 

The next three were captured with the A7ii with a 2X teleconverter and a Laowa 100mm 2X macro lens.

I am currently (at least for now) using a pair of 2X teleconverters and a Laowa 100mm 2X macro lens, which like the Laowa 25mm macro is a manual focus lens. 

The Laowa 100mm 2X macro goes from infinity focus to 2X magnification with a minimum working distance of around 72mm, with apertures from f/2.8 to f/22. With the pair of 2X teleconverters it goes from infinity focus to 8X magnification (scene size 4.5mm x 3mm) with an unchanged minimum working distance of around 72mm, which is a very good distance for 8X magnification, and apertures from f/11 to f/90. 

I have been getting results that I like with effective apertures much smaller than the f/45 equivalent of my close-up lens setups. It turns out that some modern processing software can pick up weak signals of detail from images that are highly softened from diffraction, and can bring those details into visibility without looking forced or unnatural. To do this I am shooting raw and using DXO PhotoLab for raw conversion and some associated processing, using Lightroom for image-specific adjustments, mainly to tonality, and cropping, and using Topaz DeNoise AI for output sharpening and noise reduction.

There are some examples in the next post.

2019 -2020. A settled approach to botanical subjects

 It is over 18 months since the previous entry. Much has happened since then, the most important of course being Coronavirus and all the implications of that. Since my wife and I are in the "vulnerable persons" category we have not been off our property in 8 months apart from a couple of visits to the doctor and dentist. My photography since March 2020 has been solely what I could find in our garden.

Prior to Coronavirus, in Spring 2019, I did an exercise (written up here) comparing single-image captures with focus-stacked images for botanical subjects to help me get a better balance between the two methods. Since then I have been using both methods. Sometimes it is too breezy for stacking to work, and sometimes it is obvious that only stacking will work for a particular subject, so in either case I use just one of the methods. Very often though I use both methods and choose which method's images I like best for each individual subject.

I have simplified my processing for focus stacks and now have a workflow that is fairly fast and efficient. Stacks can consume huge amounts of time. To avoid that, when stacks become difficult I simply move on to another subject.

Here are some examples. I picked these without regard to whether they were stacks or single-capture images. As it turns out half of them are focus stacked (from 6K video) and half are single-capture images. this is a fair reflection of how I have been using the two methods. The first eight used a Panasonic G9 with Olympus 60mm macro, the last but one used a Panasonic G80 with Olympus 60mm macro and the last one used a Panasonic TZ90 pocket superzoom. 

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Post processing

Right from the outset, 12 years ago, post processing became an integral part of my photographic experience. I haven't counted, but I expect I have spent much more time processing images than I have spent capturing them.

I enjoy post processing, learning how to do it better, experimenting with different techniques and products, discussing it with others. I can't imagine simply using images straight out of the camera. 

I am convinced that post processing can make a big difference to the look of images and can usually (for my images, and my visual preferences) improve them compared to what comes out of the camera.

I hope that my post processing has improved over time. One of the things I did while preparing these posts was to reprocess some images with my current processing products and workflow to see how they compare to how I processed them four to five years ago in 2014. Two were captured with a Panasonic FZ200 small sensor bridge camera, two with a micro four thirds Panasonic G3 and two with an APS-C Canon 70D. All six are small aperture shots with image quality dominated by the softening effects of diffraction (the first five used apertures equivalent to around f/45 on full frame, the last one an aperture equivalent to around f/26 on full frame). I believe diffraction-softened images like this are particularly susceptible to improvement in perceieved sharpness/detail from effective post processing.

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Comparison 1: Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 2, Panasonic FZ200, f/8, 1/640 sec, ISO 100, flash

Comparison 3: Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 4, Panasonic G5, f/22, 1/160 sec, ISO 160, flash

Comparison 5, Canon 70D, f/32, 1/250 sec, ISO 800, flash

Comparison 6, Canon 70D, f/16, 1/80 sec, ISO 1600, available light
(I made a mistake in processing this one and included the extra sharpening in Silkypix that I normally use only for invertebrates. The fine crystalline structure of the petals is therefore probably a little overdone.)

I know, because people have told me, that my post processing looks to be complicated and time-consuming. That is not how I see it. I deal with large numbers of images and over the years I have deveoped a workflow that lets me deal with these large sets of images quite quickly and with much less effort than might appear from a description of the process. This involves using several pieces of software, using each for what it is particularly good at, and using batch processing to get images into a state where they are easy to handle before I start making any adjustments to individual images.

I currently use between two and six software products while processing a set of images. Depending on the circumstances this may include some or all of the following:

• Fast Picture Viewer, for an initial, very rapid trawl of the images to get rid of the obviously unusable ones. Fast Picture Viewer uses the small JPEG images embedded in raw files rather the raw files themselves as used by Fast Raw Viewer, but for my purposes the embedded JPEGs are good enough and Fast Picture Viewer has a macro facility which I use to file the selected (actually, the non-rejected) images by ISO, which makes DXO processing much easier.
• Either DXO PhotoLab (for stills) or Helicon Focus (for stacks) for the first stage of the processing, using PhotoLab for noise reduction of noisy small sensor raw files and using Helicon Focus for botanical subject stacking and associated retouching to cure or at least hide stacking problems.
• Sometimes, Silkypix to add extra sharpening/revealing of fine detail for invertebrates and/or rescuing colours from very bright areas, especially for flowers.
• Always, Lightroom, to apply image-specific adjustments such as cropping, adjusting tonality or localised sharpening or noise reduction, and select the images I want to keep.
• Very occasionally, Photoshop to do some additional processing that I can't do in Lightroom, for example complicated cloning.
• Quite often, XNView to review the processed images as output by Lightroom and see if I still want to keep them or not, or see if they need some additional processing.
• Always, Faststone Image Viewer to deal with the bureaucracy of renaming images, deciding what order to display them in and make backup copies locally and on line.

I use batch processing when using PhotoLab and/or Silkypix. In the case of PhotoLab the presets I use are specific to a camera and ISO. The PhotoLab batch processing can be very time-consuming, but it only takes a very small amount of time to set it up and the rest of the time I can leave it to cook and do other things.