Macro Attack

[MyGreenToe]

Hey guys. Thought I'd share some of the macros I've taken of my girls. Not growing at present, so looking at these pics helps keep me from going crazy about it.

These shots are a Blowfish cut I used to have.(a dead pump while out of town cost me a tray of clones, and my last blowfish was among them)

This shot is a blowfish leaf in flower. I had just done some water changing and this leaf had water in a cupped leaf. The trichomes above the leaf edge are under water being magnified by the curvature of the water. If you look close you can see individual plant cells on the leaf edge.

Here is a purpling Blowfish leaf, in 3 successively closer shots. I love how you can see the color creeping up the stalks of the trichomes.

This Blowfish girl was looking lovely with cloudy trichs:

More Macros to follow...

Keep it green
MGT

 

[MyGreenToe]

All the shots in this post are done using a technique called 'stacking'. One of the problems with macro photography is the extremely limited depth of field. When shooting this close, the in focus part of the image is basically as thin as a sheet of paper. To overcome this, each finished image is composed of 10-20 shots, each taken at a minutely different focal length. All the in focus parts are combined, which provides a much greater depth of field than can be achieved with a single shot at this magnification. These were all done when I was learning this technique, and aren't perfect. I still love em.

This is a leaf of apollo 11 I snipped off to shoot:

Also Apollo 11. Check out the plant cells on the leaf surface:

This is a Durban cut I ran for a while:

The following are all dry bud macros, mostly Blowfish:

Ok that's all for now. Maybe I'll dig some more out later.

Keep it green
MGT

 

[lokes]

Fantastic photos. Made me want to cry reading about losing that Blowfish, I bet you did.
That's one pretty lady.
I'd love to hear more on stacking and what kind of lens you use for these photo's.
Well done, thanx for sharing.

 

[niluola]

Oh boy, nothing like an onslaught of some twisting trichomes! Great pics, thanks for sharing!

 

[Hammerhead]

Lokes stacking is done with software. You take allot of pics and the software will stack or combine ea photo making the photo more sharp and clear.

You can get the same with the right hardware and patients. Those are good . Macro Photography is time consuming and difficult to get the lighting right. out of 100 pics you may only get 5 that are perfect. Here is some shots of Heavy Duty Fruity.

 

[MyGreenToe]

Nice shots there mate! You're right, macro photography is not for the impatient. There are alot more missed shots than successful ones, even with a brilliant setup. Worth the work if you have it in you though. I enjoy it!

 

[Weird]

hammerhead what are you saying

i dont understand stacking, does picassa do this?

 

[Ramius]

Incredible shots

 

[MyGreenToe]

hammerhead what are you saying

i dont understand stacking, does picassa do this?

I'm not sure if Picasa can do Image Stacking. Photoshop does, albeit poorly for macro stacking.

The program I use is called Zerene Stacker. Their web page will help you better understand what it is we're doing here. Check it out:
http://zerenesystems.com/stacker/

Besides Macro Stacking, the other purposes for image stacking are:
1) Night sky/ star shots. In order to increase the magnitude of light in the night sky, a photographer can take multiple long exposures and later combine them at their pc to increase the brightness of objects in the night sky bu several magnitudes. This requires a moving setup to follow the movement of the sky as the earth rotates. Images created with this technique are absolutely incredible. The milky way can appear as bright as spilt milk across the night sky, like this:

This image is from the Denver Astrological Society's page, and is not mine.
2)The other primary purpose of image stacking is to create HDR images, or High Dynamic Range shots. One of the challenges of landscape photography is finding the absolute best exposure settings to capture the largest range of data from dark to light as possible. Your average digital SLR camera can capture up to 7 or 8 stops of this data, which is actually quite alot. Achieving that full range of information can only be done with the right combination of aperture and shutter speed. Even then, it is not enough to truly represent the full range of tone of a contrasty and interesting landscape. To put things in perspective, consider Ansel Adams, the most famous landscape photographer. Through use of medium format film cameras, and his own system of exposure measurement, he often achieved a full 10 stops of range in his landscape images. This is largely why he is the most famous of landscape photographers. In order to achieve that level of range with modern digital SLR's, one must combine multiple exposures to achieve more stops of information than your camera can capture in one image. This usually involves 3 images, one slightly underexposed, one exposed correctly, and one slightly overexposed. The 3 images are crunched into a HDR program(photoshop can do this well enough for most folks), and out comes an image with more range than any of the individual images. This requires finesse in the combining phase to not come out looking overdone, but can be very rewarding in high contrast scenes. This page has a great picture to show you what I mean:
http://www.hdrsoft.com/

Hope that helps explain what image stacking is all about and why a photographer would want to do it.

 

[MyGreenToe]

How about some more Trichome macros?

These are mostly Blowfish, Apollo 11, and Durban Poison.

 

[MyGreenToe]

And some lovely seeds...

Enjoy!

Keep it Green
MGT


PS Please don't use my images without my express permission.

 

[Jare]

Truly hot stuff here man, what a beautiful shots... impressive..

 

[MyGreenToe]

Hey guys. Thanks for all the rep hits.

Here are a few of my non-herb macros.

This is a closeup of the word liberty on a penny(US currency):

This is some super fine black polyester thread in a fine eyed needle:

The tip of a ball point pen:

Here is a tiny bug that was on my car one afternoon, can't remember what he's called:

These two shots are of a Mufflehead, or non-biting midge, that swarms my part of the country for a short period every summer. They look a lot like mosquitoes to the naked eye, but fortunately they don't bite or sting. They swarm and are annoyingly everywhere when they are around. However they are a very important part of the freshwater ecosystem here, and a sign that lake erie is growing healthier.

Ok that's it for today!

Keep it green!
MGT

 

[lokes]

Hey MyGreen, any new macro shots. I just love em.

 

[exploziv]

great pics!

 

[MyGreenToe]

Hey MyGreen, any new macro shots. I just love em.

My op is shut down right now, so I can't take any new shots at the moment.

I do however have lots of old ones to post yet...

These are all Apollo 11. Those fat cheddary pistils seem to show up on all the A11 cuts I've seen, I love it! It's quite distinctive, even when dry.

Thanks for looking!
Keep it Green!
MGT

 

[RetroGrow]

Nice. What kind of camera?

 

[MyGreenToe]

Most of these were taken with an Olympus E-330, and E-520. Various lens and bellows setups to get different magnifications.

 

[lokes]

What a great way to get to know strains intimately. Seeing them so close, I bet its real easy to see many differences in the different types.
Thanx again for sharing, I see why you like the cheddar. LOL

 

[MatanuskaValley]

MyGreen any new pics