Macro creatures

[rain-]

I've been playing with my Canon Powershot A80 and the macro thingy (+16 diopters) today and I am almost starting to get good pictures, the backgrounds aren't that great, but the subjects are rather sharp. :)

I don't know what to do with the backgrounds. I blurred the first ones background since it had a lot of noice, I'm not sure if it looks good or not like this. There was the same problem with the second pictures background... Maybe I should just try to take new and better pictures.

Cyclops sp., about 1/2 millimetres:

http://sademetsa.net/cyclops_macro_2.jpg

Cyclops 1/2 mm, seed shrimp 1 mm and an ugly bubble:

http://sademetsa.net/trio_3.jpg

Seed shrimp:

http://sademetsa.net/ostracod_macro.jpg

[rain-]

I saw this picture (http://www.imagequest3d.com/catalogue/freshwater/pages/u019_jpg.htm) and wanted to try the same myself, but since I don't have water fleas, I used seed shrimps.

http://sademetsa.net/ostracoda_macro.jpg

[paradise]

Great stuff, that last one is SOOO cool. Tell us how you did this. What are seed shrimp?? never heard.

[Ibn]

Nice clean shots of some very minute creatures. Never heard of seed shrimps either.

[charles]

Seed shrimps also known as ostracods.

Great pictures!

[rain-]

Seed shrimps (Ostracoda (http://www.gre.ac.uk/schools/nri/earth/ostracod/introduction.htm)) are really cool creatures, much cooler than Cyclops, since they are large enough (the species I have grows to 1 mm) to take good pictures of them. They usually move along the tank glass eating something they find from the surface. Sometimes they swim around the tank looking like drunken tiny bees. :D

And about the picture, I collected some seed shrimps from my tank with small plastic pipette in as little water as possible and put a drop of water with the creatures on black cardboard paper (looks gray in the picture because of the angle and light) on top of my 38G tank with 2 metal halides. And then I took a picture using a tripod (my hands are wayyy too shaky for me to try to do it without), I think I used flash, but I covered 90% of it, other settings are F/4,9 and 1/20 sec. I used optical zoom (3x I think) of the A80 and the 16 diopters lens thingy and manually focused. I took several pictures and unfortunately this one has the annoying white area in the back right, others didn't, but the creatures weren't in right places inside the droplet.

I have a feeling I will be doing a re-shoot soon. Any suggestions to what to do differently then?

[RazorBlade]

That last shot is very cool! At 1st look, "a photoshopped image" but you've proven that it can be done with normal photography!

You should clone out the black areas at the top left corner. Photo definitely has potential!

Thx for sharing!

[rain-]

Thanks. :)

Yeah, I suppose the black has to go, I need to to try to do that tomorrow. Oh, and this is the first time I've been able to get such a shallow DOF, I think this is good practise while waiting to get a macro lens for my 350D. :)

I think this is the best so far of the creature pictures, the bubble somehow makes it look even more cool:

http://sademetsa.net/daphnia_macro.jpg

[Andreas Werth]

Satu,
great series with wonderful details. Especially the last one.
I wonder about the sharpness/lack of distortion using such a high diopters lens.

[rain-]

I didn't even realise that there is more distortion with this type of lens, but of course its just logical. Now it's too dark for me to take any pictures, but I think I'll test the lens with squared paper just to see how it looks like. I haven't noticed any distortion, but maybe I am taking pictures of small enough creatures (the water flea is 2-3 millimetres, the others are max. 1 millimetres) and since they are in the middle of the picture, there's not much distortion (oh, and these are cropped pictures). The pictures are annoyingly grainy and I had to blur the backround of the first ones to make it look a bit more pleasant (even though blur isn't really pretty itself either). This latest bright one was easier, didn't need much post processing, just a wee bit surface blur. Oh, and I made the water droplet picture smaller than the original (scaled down, is that a right phrase for that?).

[Cuong]

Awesome stuff Satu! The last one looks surprisingly pretty for a microorganism :-D

[rain-]

Sometimes the smallest things are the most beautiful. I would love to be able to take pictures through microscope, for example diatom algae (http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/seagrant/GLWL/Algae/Diatoms/Images/MTUTabellaria_fenestrata.jpg) species are just amazing.

[rain-]

Interesting, looks like I need a new P&S camera or then I should send this to be repaired if it's possible. Because look at this, no zoom, no close-up lens, just macro mode (http://sademetsa.net/regular.jpg). Here's the same with the close-up lens (http://sademetsa.net/macro.jpg). And here's the same with close-up lens and 3x optical zoom. (http://sademetsa.net/macro_3xzoom.jpg) The weird thing is that the last one looks the best and the normal picture looks the worst. :D

Any ideas why my camera has such a bad distortion? Since this is a cheap P&S that isn't manifactured anymore, is it even worth trying to fix it? Well, at least it works really well with the zoom and close-up lens. :D

[Ibn]

Any pics to go along with what you're describing? :)

[rain-]

There's links to three pictures in the text, macro mode (http://sademetsa.net/regular.jpg) -focus, macro mode + lens (http://sademetsa.net/macro.jpg) and manual focus + lens + 3x digital zoom (http://sademetsa.net/macro_3xzoom.jpg). I hope they are showing up right. I only resized them all in the Photoshop, no cropping in any of them.

[Andreas Werth]

Any pics to go along with what you're describing? :)

@Eric: this seems to be a problem with some of the new templates. Links doesn´t show up in different colors compared to normal text (like in the old "hard wire" template)

@Satu, i think you can consider yourself lucky that there is such a good macro functionality.
Perhaps some sources of error are neutralizing each other?

[rain-]

It does seem like the camera lens has a barrel distortion that gets evened out with the close-up lenses different type of distortion. And yeah, I suppose this is just a good thing (for macro photos), even though looks like I need to get another cheap P&S for regular pictures or then I have to consider getting more lenses for my DSLR so I can use that for regular pictures too.

Oh, I realised there was one picture I should have taken too. Regular settings with 3x optical zoom (http://sademetsa.net/regular_3xzoom.jpg) (the other pictures were taken from shorter distance, about 5 centimetres I think, but with 3x zoom and no close-up lens, shortest focusing distance is about 20 centimetres or so). Looks like the barrel distortion is bad only with no zoom at all.

All the other pictures are focused with the "macro auto focus mode" thingy exept the close-up lens + 3x zoom (I used manual focus there). I think it doesn't matter much, but thought I should clarify.

[squidfish]

Satu

That last Daphnia shot is superb. You have capture some really interesting detail on this 'fish food' :). Looks like the waterflea has been eating plenty of algae too.

Cheers

Rich

[rain-]

Thanks, I am quite happy with the picture myself too. It was a bit difficult to take since there was a lot of light, almost too much. I turned a light fixture with two fluorescent tubes upwards and put a glass plate on top of it and put the water flea on the glass plate with some water. And yeah, it's been eating spirulina powder. I hope I'll be able to keep these creatures alive. They are actually quite pretty and interesting to watch. :)

[paradise]

Satu, great stuff. That last one is amazing.