Shooting a macro insect shot

- I'm here once again today with Bob Sober, a giant bug photographer. Bob's actually normal sized, the photographs he makes are giant photos of bugs. Ones like this one. And this one. And this. And this. He's got a lot of them, they're all spectacularly beautiful. Bob, I want to talk today about what you're using hardware-wise. Now, if you've seen my macro course you should already be familiar with the idea of focus stacking, that's the process of shooting lots of images focused at different depths and then combining them so that you can get a macro shot with depth of field.

Bob, you're working at such great magnification, you have to do a lot of stacking, and you've built a custom rig here to do it. Can you walk us through what you've got here? - Okay. Yes, I've got a... The cameras, I wanted the largest sensor I could get, and Canon did a nice job of developing this 50 megapixel sensor. - This is the 5DSr. - 5DSr, and then the 65 millimeter macro, 1 to 5x.

- Also Canon. - Also Canon. That helps, a whole lot. Most of the time I'm shooting it's... 2 or 3x, but I've shot at all settings. The more difficult thing I've ended up having to do since I'm trying to do a panorama, also, the focus stacking, and then I also have a panorama, so I had to figure out what the... Focus point, or the nodal point was at each of those places.

Now that means I'm not shooting at 1.5x, I'm gonna shoot at 1x or 2 or 3 because I don't have nodal points found for all the other possibilities. Then I have my light, that I can adjust the brightness and I can change whether it's... I can cast shadows if I'd like, and eliminate shadows if I don't want them. And then I also have a 3D printer here. I'm using only the Z-axis on it, so I'm actually moving the insect closer to the camera, and the camera is stable, it's just able to rotate for the panorama functions.

- So there's a platform right here, underneath your light, and so this is moving up and down. - Correct. - So, when I demoed focus stacking in my macro course, I moved camera forward and backward, you're holding the camera still and moving the subject forward and backward, why did you choose that approach? - Well, first of all the main reason is 'cus it's lighter. (Laughing) The insect doesn't way very much, so I can move it and it's not gonna be vibrating forever. - Meaning after you, that's true, when you're focus stacking by moving the camera, you move the camera and then you have to wait for the camera to calm down.

- And so this ended up working really well. There are some issues that can, that might be built into that, and that I chose also to set my light is separate from all of it. So, it's not attached to the camera it's not attached to the insect, or the platform that the insect's on, and it's... You know a person could make the argument that that's gonna cause some problems, it hasn't caused me any problems so far. And I think part of it is that I'm using such an incredibly bright light source here, that moving it slightly is not going to really...

change a shadow that might be created from a hair that's on the insect, you know? That's the kind of small things we're talking about. - Right, right. So this Canon 65mm, is a really weird lens. It's manual focus, but you can't actually focus, you have to move the camera back and forth. It can go from a normal 1x macro magnification up to 5x, which is pretty colossal. But I know that you've also got the 180 macro, and I believe we've got the 100 macro.

How are you choosing? Why are you choosing to use the 180 sometimes? - Well, the 180 is autofocus, and so when I'm using that I'm actually using the motor in the lens, to do my focus stacking. So then, in that case, I'm not moving either one. Some software will use that focusing mechanism in order to create the focus stacking, and it does a great job, frankly.

It does a wonderful job on that. - My assumption is you're using that for larger subjects. - Oh yes. A lot larger subjects. If I have to back the camera up for where I'm not really even in macro anymore. If it's a really large insect, then I have to do a different lighting type as well. The hole in the top of this is only so big, and if the insect's too big, I back the way lens way up, and maybe I can get him in it, maybe I can't.

Sometimes I've done it and I start focusing... Start finding the hole, photographing the hole in my light, instead. So, yeah, you have to make some adjustments according to which one. If I'm doing a quick study, really on any insect, I can do the 180 using the focus motor, and I can go get an idea of what this insect will look like very quickly. So it's a good supplement, for this one. This one is the most incredible lens though, in that it delivers the sharpness that you really need on this.

If you can't see every little hair on these insects, it's not as satisfying. It really isn't. - So, you shoot a stack of images, you stack them together, and then within that frame you've got deep depth of field all the way through the images. But you are at a level of magnification where you aren't seeing the whole insect. You're seeing a part of it. So you say you're shooting a panorama, are you moving the camera across and shooting tiles, or are you rotating the camera just as you do when you shoot a panorama? - I'm rotating it.

If I could just move it across and shoot tiles that would be a wonderful thing to do, but... Unless the subject is so thin that you won't need to have hardly any stacks in it, you'll see the sides, it's not going to be the same image. The thickness of the image is going to keep me from doing the tiles. I've tried it, once, and it didn't work out at all. So I rotate the camera, find the nodal point, rotate the camera in two different directions in order to create a panorama.

- So nodal point, for those of you who don't know, is the point around which the focal plane is rotating. So that ensures that you're not rotating off-axis from the center of where the image is being made. So, I'm still confused. If you tried a tile, is it just that you can't merge them together because the perspective from tile to tile is wrong, or? - Well, if you shoot a small subject and you shoot straight down on it, and then you move to the side and shoot down on it again, you're gonna see the side of the insect that you didn't see in the first shot.

And so... It didn't work for me. I won't say it won't work for anybody, but it didn't work for me. - Okay, okay. - And we're gonna get into your post-production process in a separate movie. So, you've got, you said, this 3D printer. So this is just... You went with a 3D printer because a 3D printer has very fine control on three axis and you needed a way to finely move your tabletop. So you've stripped the 3D printer bit out of here and you're just using one of the motors and one of the axis? - Well, it's a full system, it's a full 3D printer.

All I have to do is to use the control for the 3D printer to print. I mean I can still print with this printer. It's all fully... And the guy that helped me said, He said, "Well Bob... Why would you just want to move the Z-axis, and just have one piece of equipment to do that when you could have one piece of equipment that does that and you can also print with the 3D printer?" With all the stuff that I was doing, connections between all this equipment becomes the critical part.

Now you can print any connection you want. (Laughing) - Okay, so you're controlling all this rig from your computer using focus stacking software, so this is software that automatically drives the camera, and the rig. It takes a picture, it moves the rig a little bit, or in this case it moves the table a little bit, takes another picture, and it does that through all the steps. So. Typically, at a 2 to 3x magnification on this lens, how many shots are you having to go through for one stack? - It's all a matter of how thick the subject is.

But I will be shooting at probably a tenth of a millimeter, a lot of times. And I'll shoot... A hundred images, something like that. A hundred is pretty typical. - You mention before that you went through and you really worked the aperture sweet spot of this lens. - Yes. - Meaning that if you focus too shallow, not only do you lose depth of field but you get an overall softness. If you focus too deep you gain some depth of field, which you lose sharpness to refraction. You found around f/7? - Yes.

7.1. I always set it on that, it's never failed me. And the way I determined that was just shooting at every single aperture opening that I could get, since it's third points on your control, here. So I found that that gave me a successful shot. And every time I move away from that, and I have, accidentally usually, I'm always disappointed. - So for those of you who don't know at this level of magnification, even at f/7, your depth of field is still, a fraction of a millimeter? - A tenth or less, little bit less.

- Tenth or less, of a millimeter, of depth of field. That's the only bit that's gonna be in focus, that's why he's having to take a hundred shots that slices together. So, what software are you using to control all this? - It's the Helicon. I use the Helicon for the stacking, and I'll use the Helicon if I'm using the 180mm lens, and I'll use the... Canon software, this is set up right now with the Canon software because it doesn't have a motor in the lens.

And then I have a processing software that I use for driving the 3D printer. - Okay, so you're actually doing the motion with 3D printing software, not with a focus stacking application of some kind? - Right. - 'Cus there are some focus stacking robots that will work with Helicon or Zerene, or others, that will move the camera and take the shot and everything. You're gonna use different pieces of software. - Right, I am. - You've gone with the... 5DSr, here, which is the 50 megapixel sensor as you mentioned.

It also lacks that low pass filter in front, so are you noticing a boost in sharpness from that? - It's incredible. - Really? You were shooting with a 5D Mark II before. - Right, right. And they are... You know, when I say night and day difference, I mean, that's night and day of looking at something that is highly magnified. A lot of people probably wouldn't see the difference, but I can see it, and it is night and day. These things, it is the most incredible... The combination of that sensor with this lens, is fantastic.

- So your panorama, you're panning across it. But you're doing more than just one strip. - Oh yes. - So you're having to start the camera in the dead center of the insect? 'Cus you've got to look up to the left and pan across, and then straight across and then down... - Right. I'll usually shoot a length of the insect dead center. And then I'll move off to each side, and sometimes I have to move off two times. - [Ben] Now are you tilting off to each side? - Yes. Tilt off to each side, and then I'm also tilting the other direction, for the length. - And each one of those frames is a stack of a hundred images.

On a typical insect, what's your total image count by the time you're done? - 1200, something like that. So you usually twelve, sometimes it's... 1600, something like that. - 12-1600, 50 megapixel RAW images is what he's working with. So, needless to say, that's a post-production slog. And we're gonna look at that - (Laughing) next week, as we try to figure out how he takes all this stuff and puts it together.