My First Stacked Picture!!!

Yes!!!!!!!!

Thanks to you, Jamey, I ordered a "digiscope adapter" and today it arrived! I've been working for the past few hours and finally got my first ever decent stacked image! The first image is representative of my old photography; single shot on automatic settings. The second image is a result of many, many hours spent learning the settings of my camera/scope/lighting, and hours of practice with CombineZ.

Many thanks go to Jamey, CombineZ, and everyone who puts up amazing images on Mindat that are endlessly inspiring. Any suggestions or comments are welcome! Thanks to everyone for inspiring me - this is extremely gratifying to me!

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Today is a good day!

Ben Kirchner

That's terrific Ben. I found that stacking works really well also. I am, however, having some less than stellar results with my new very expensive adaptor, but I'm sure I'll work the bugs out eventually.
Bill

Gratulation Ben :)!
Combine Z, ZM, ZP etc. provides enormous possibilities!
You will discover a new fantasy world of minerals B) !
It's just about training - between these two images is 3 years of training - but I think it is worth it!
The procedure is still the same - the rest is training and your imagination!

I started with combine in year 2006 - here is result - [www.mindat.org]

..and this picture is from 2009 year [www.mindat.org]

Just practice a lot of pictures - nothing else ;) .


Vita



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2009 05:41PM by Vítězslav Snášel.

Congrats! Looks like it is working out great for you!!

Ben,

What equipment are you using? I currently use a Nikon Coolpix 4500 mated to the right ocular of my Chinese-made National 10-40x zoom 'scope, using a Scopetronix MaxView lens system and a 37-28 mm T-ring. Results are decent when I use Combine ZP stacking software. I just purchased a Nikon Coolpix P6000 and I need a 52mm-37mm ring to use the Scopetronix lens system with the new camera.

Nice image! It looks like the stacked image is zoomed a bit further out than the unprocessed one.

Steve Stuart

Thanks everyone,

I completely agree that it's a whole new world of opportunities! I am really pleased with this picture, but as I know now, they don't all just turn out perfectly every time! It's a lot of work, and a lot of fun. Vita, I'm impressed with your progress - and I'm really glad to have all the inspiration from you and others. Bill, my adapter is funky too - to put it nicely. I actually have to tape it or tie it down with a string.. Kinda tacky, and it's annoying to undo it every time I want to just use the scope. Just adds to the work. Hopefully you'll fix yours!

Steve I'm using a Canon Powershot A720IS and a Chinese-made scope also. The scope zooms from 7x to 112.5x (up to 45x with 10x and the rest with 25x eyepieces.) I'm going to switch over to the 10x eyepieces for the future unless I absolutely need the high-zoom; they're much better, allow much more light and FOV. So basically that's it; the camera, adapter, scope and Combine-Z. I am by no means a professional or knowledgeable photographer - for the longest time I only used the automatic settings. I would love to have some nicer equipment, but my funding is VERY tight, to say the least; what extra money I do have, I of course prefer specimens, since I can't even take any pictures at all without those!

But yeah, I would love to discuss mineral photography and Combine-Z further with anyone.. I wonder, are there any e-mail groups or message boards for this? I don't really think the purpose of this one (here on mindat) is to post every picture I generate and ask for improvements, but that would probably help me quite a lot if I found a place to do that. Or if anyone wants to help by being my mentor, that would be great too! Send me a PM if you want to talk more!

Thanks for the kind words and inspiration everyone, I do appreciate it.

Ben Kirchner

Ben,

There is a Combine Z group on Yahoo Groups. Yahoo Groups This should get you to the site

Doug

Good work Ben!

Very cool looking.

Ben, you have to tie the adapter down? It shouldn't need to be, it should just clamp on and be good to go.

Thanks Bri! Yeah it's very exciting - has made the last couple days a lot of fun. I had been wanting to use Combine-Z for months and finally I can! Now, as usual, the better equipment/resources I have, the more difficulties arise! I'm working on this one piece that has Chalcotrichite crystals that are basically stacks of cubes, (VERY small though but perfect cubes!) that are usually on top of, and sometimes included in, Selenite! So the Selenite is very reflective, and the Chalcotrichite is too, and of course I want it to look like cubes. There is also bright blue Azurite. So basically, the lighting is very tricky! Now that I can finally take stacked photos, I realize how extremely difficult it is to control all the variables! So much fun though!

Jamey, yeah, it has to be tied down. The eyepiece isn't extended very far, and the adapter doesn't have much room to grip on the eyepiece side - thus, the weight of it pulls it down. It stays in place that way, but it isn't tight, and the camera is not in the proper place for pictures. (It only covers barely the top 1/4 of the eyepiece.) But tying it down holds it in place perfectly tight. I don't know - I'd like to have someone experienced take a look at it. Maybe if I put up a picture you might be able to see if I'm doing something wrong? It works like this but I wish I didn't have to tie it down.

Here's my newest pic - not really usable, but it's getting there. 10-photo stack of the Chalcotrichite.



Ben Kirchner

Ah, I never tried it on the binoc eyepieces of mine. I always used the trinoc port on mine and never had any issues. Sorry I didn't know about the issue using the binoc eye pieces, I feel bad now. :(

That makes sense, that must be it. I can see it working perfectly on the tri port. Hey man don't feel bad - seriously, it's way better than nothing! Definitely worth the $28 or so. Haven't taken it off since I got it. Next scope upgrade will definitely have the third port, but until then, (i.e. until well after Tucson!) this is definitely the best I'll be able to do. Seriously Jamey without your help I'd still be struggling with.. Eh it doesn't even bear repeating! I shudder to think of the old days!

Ben Kirchner

Pheeew! Cool then. :)

I started playing with CombineZP as well. Getting ok results but nothing exciting as of yet. What CombineZ macros have prople found useful for mineral photography. Any hints about choosing which macros help with which situations? I have only played with the standard set as of yet

Thanks!

I have just used the standard ones as well. In my experience, i seem to have trouble with deeper depth of field specimens especially ones that are clear and colorless. And at least on my computer, it works rather slowly, so I don't feel like experimenting a lot.

I use the pyramid-do-stack (pds) and pyramid-maximum-contrast (pmc) macros together. In my experience, pmc is better able to see through all the flare and ghosts and muck that you get when doing a deep stack on a shiny mineral. The result is generally free of the halos and boogers that pds leaves behind. However, the overall level of detail in the result is lower, and the contrast is lower, and the colors are not right. So my method is to run both macros, and open the results of each in Gimp (a free and very good image editing program), and adjust the contrast and colors of the pmc result to match those of the pds result. Then, I'll clone the good bits of one of these over the bad bits of the other, and do a final round of contrast and color adjustment and sharpening.

For the most difficult specimens (the ludicrously teensy and glinty ones), I'll add another step: I'll have CombineZP align all the raw images, then I'll save them all. In Gimp, I'll clone from the good areas of these raw images to cover up the bad stuff in my working image. I might use every raw image, or every other one. It takes a bit more time, but it's really not difficult. As an example, the attached photo is the raw output from combineZP. The result after doing all of the above stuff is here.

Here's one that I composited entirely by hand, using CZP only for alignment (the stack macros had significant trouble with this one). This was just a test to see how well that would work, and it took a couple of hours. It works for me. Consequently, I would say, don't be afraid to compose by hand if you've got a really cool but difficult specimen.