More photo stacks

gparr · Feb 4, 2009

I recently got a chance to photograph corals in Mike Clifford's (Chicago) reef aquarium. A majority of the shots I did were image stacks. The crown-jewel of Mike's reef is his chalice. Here are three shots of the chalice, a shot of a 2-in favia frag, and a undata. The danae isn't my favorite of the group by far, but it involves 24 shots and I thought it would start to fall apart with so many shots.
Gary

#1, stack of 9 images

#2, stack of 7 images

#3, stack of 10 images

#4, stack of 12 images

#5, stack of 24 images

BeakerBob · Feb 4, 2009

Great shots and stacking. The chalice has crisp focus throughout even though it's 3 dimensional!

Poseidon · Feb 4, 2009

#4 is the winner for me Gary! Awesome work!

JuniorMC8704 · Feb 4, 2009

Very very nice Gary. I find it hard to photograph anything macro without stacking now...nothing really compares. Do you find yourself doing the same thing?

gparr · Feb 4, 2009

Thanks Bob and Poseidon.
Junior, LOL! Was thinking exactly that while working on these images. Stacking takes all of the shackles off of macro work and is truly an addiction. I'm curious to try it with flowers in the field. Wind will add a stiff challenge to stacking.
Gary

JuniorMC8704 · Feb 4, 2009

I meant to ask Gary, are you using any additional lighting, or just the tank lighting?

Also, i hear you on the wild flowers. There is a whole world of things i want to try it on when the weather here breaks.

I think some petosky stones in wet beach sand would be pretty amazing using focus stacking.

gparr · Feb 4, 2009

No, I don't supplement tank lighting when doing coral shots. I've tried, but never cared for the results. Yes, I'm getting anxious for spring, too.
Gary

Reef Pets · Feb 4, 2009

Amazing as always!

cultivatedcoral · Feb 4, 2009

Beautiful shots!

mcliffy2 · Feb 4, 2009

Gary, thanks for the photo session again. On your suggestion, I came over to check this site out. Seems like there are some good folks here and some really good photographers...I would post some more pics of my tank, but after Gary's shots, my photos are rather embarassing

Oh and one slight addendum...the last coral is an undata (Tyree True Undata)...actually one of my personal favs, but it photographs best under blue and white light - it looks like the ati pro color I added the day before brought out the reds and made the purple rim appear more pinkish. Here is my feeble attempt at a top down of the undata:

gparr · Feb 4, 2009

Mike, good to see you here. It's a good place and yes, several talented photographers here. Post some photos and we'll give you some help so you can get better. No need to be embarrassed.
Gary

JuniorMC8704 · Feb 4, 2009

Pic looks nice to me Mike. Keep it up.

gparr · Feb 4, 2009

mcliffy2 said:
Oh and one slight addendum...the last coral is an undata (Tyree True Undata)

Thanks, Mike. Not sure what I was thinking. Correction made.
Gary

vietcu · Feb 4, 2009

great looking pictures guys. I am new to all this so could someone explain how to do stacking or point me to the right place so I can read up on how to do this? I just got my macro lense in so would like to know how to get great shots like you guys. My equipments is a Canon 10D(given to me by my brother), and a 100mm macro lense.

gparr · Feb 5, 2009

If you just got a macro lens, I would recommend you learn how to use it to get good single macro shots before attempting to stack images. I don't want to insult you, but if you can't get good images that are well exposed, sharp, and with a decent control over depth of field, stacking won't fix any shortcomings. In fact, it'll probably call attention to them. Regardless, here are a couple of recent threads in this forum in which this technique is discussed.
Gary

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16569

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16735

Mr.Firemouth · Feb 8, 2009

Gary these look great, very 3-d!
Have you tried the HDR imaging yet?
I am curious how the glow will be with the stacked overexposure in the HDR programs.
It should make the eyes of corals look like lanterns!

gparr · Feb 8, 2009

Rich,
I've tried some HDR and haven't felt it made that much of a difference. There are places where HDR is a big plus, but I've not seen it so far with coral shots. If I have lighting extremes that can't be handled through normal shooting/processing techniques, I prefer to use a graduated ND filter to even things out. Stacking gives a clear advantage with macro shooting. The jury is still out with HDR as far as I'm concerned.
Gary