Peacock Herl

Peacock herl is highly valued by fly-tiers for the natural iridescence.

This is a 10-shot stack. Canon 100mm Macro w/ Minolta 50mm reverse mounted, OCF, 1/250, f8, ISO 100, +2/3 FEC; shot tethered via lap-top - focus movement controlled via Live Remote Shooting - 1 'Medium Step' between each image. I have found that the lap-top needs to be on a separate table from the subject so as to eliminate vibration/movement.

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Good interesting shot - not tried tethered shooting
Brian V.

GJim, any chance you could share the lighting setup for that shot? You seem to have avoided blowing out the metallic-like reflections pretty well. Or did you tone it down a bit in pp?

janger wrote in post #11408543
GJim, any chance you could share the lighting setup for that shot? You seem to have avoided blowing out the metallic-like reflections pretty well. Or did you tone it down a bit in pp?

Dave:
Nothing special, really. Here is a fairly faithful re-construction of the shoot (sans subject and tether). I started by moving the back-drop (a piece of white construction paper supported by an empty Bourbon bottle) to get initial focus, then used tethered focus for the 10 shots necessary for the stack.

I did do a fair amount of PP (in addition to stacking), but nothing that overly affected the 'metallic' appearance.

I'm also including one of the intermediate shots SOOC (just converted to jpg and re-sized for forum).

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LordV wrote in post #11408443
Good interesting shot - not tried tethered shooting
Brian V.

With that particular lens setup, it's the only way that I can get accurate focusing. Attempting to hand-focus just doesn't work - too much vibration and difficult to obtain accurate, differential, steps.

GJim wrote in post #11409072
With that particular lens setup, it's the only way that I can get accurate focusing. Attempting to hand-focus just doesn't work - too much vibration and difficult to obtain accurate, differential, steps.

Not sure what mah you are using but if it's greater than around 2:1 then it's a lot easier to not use tripod but rest the camera on the same surface the subject is on- everything vibrated together then
Brian v.

LordV wrote in post #11409118
Not sure what mah you are using but if it's greater than around 2:1 then it's a lot easier to not use tripod but rest the camera on the same surface the subject is on- everything vibrated together then
Brian v.

Brian:
That's a good idea - hadn't really thought about that. Will try that the next time I decide to shoot with that lens combo. Thanks!

Will still want to used tethered shooting, though - even the slightest bump would change shot line-up!