A Little Cactus Practice

I decided to try my hand at my first 5:1 stack with the MP-E 65. I purchased a neat little cactus at the local garden center on Sunday, and I took a shot of it from far enough out to give some scale and then from as close as possible to a single emerging flower.

First shot is natural light just after sunset. I don't remember the exact stats (did that one on Sunday), but it's a stack of something like 5 images shot from a tripod with hand focusing using the focus ring.

Second shot lighting is from two large studio soft boxes. Velbon macro rail, remote release, f/5.6, ISO 200, 32-shot stack in Zerene Stacker. That white line in the top right of the frame is a needle that I couldn't quite eliminate from the field of view. Even getting it down to just that one needle was difficult, because there are many small ones you can't really see in the first shot.

Thanks for looking

At roughly 1:3

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …s/gatorlinked/6​867534725/

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Lovely work Ryan.

Nice captures.

Thanks, Bas and annubis.

Came out very well
Brian v.

Nice light choice--lots of subtle color detail!

Thanks, Brian and Jack.

Very nice. What stacking program did you use? I just can't seem to get any of them to work well for me.

canonloader wrote in post #13913619
Very nice. What stacking program did you use? I just can't seem to get any of them to work well for me.

Thanks, Mitch. I used Zerene Stacker on these. I believe I used PMAX for both, but I can't say for sure. I know people often use mostly PMAX or a combination of PMAX and DMAP in Zerene, but I often find that a pure DMAP gives me the results I like the most. In my short amount of time using the program, I have used each about 50% of the time.