Molted body parts - Chelicerae, ventral view close-up - Phidippus audax

Moved

… Don Cadle, 23 May, 2015 - 11:13am

Sweet!

Pretty incredible when you can easily count the number of serrations and see the other microsculpture on the underside of a spider fang.

Have you done any comparisons between HFP and combineZ with stacks like these? I switched from using Syncroscopy's software to combineZ (suggestion by Martin Hauser) because combineZ handles overlapping structures better. CombineZ still has problems, see this. This seems much better than combineZ. Is this the result of the HFP software or your manipulation of the image after the montaging process? Or does it have to do with the camera quality? Thanks.

… Jeff Gruber, 28 December, 2007 - 10:13am

Thanks guys

Yes, Will, I know my perspective is all screwed up. :-) Magnification and detail appears to be an addiction of sorts; I can never get enough of either.

Jeff, I haven't done any comparisons with CombineZ, but have heard that it does handle overlap a little better than HFP. The editing tool HFP provides to allow manual fixing of overlapped areas works really well but can be fairly time-consuming to use so I rarely bother unless I can make a significant improvement in a short period of time. It usually pays to try different "Radius" settings instead, at the expense of losing small amounts of detail in certain areas of the image.

IIRC, I didn't do any manual touch-up with this stack inside HFP, and Photoshop work was limited to levels adjustments, sharpening, removing the bottom part of the other ventral view (which was from the same stack as this one), and probably removing a few "floating" setae from the top. Now, since I did the stack over a month ago (11/22), and the Photoshop work was just last night, and my memory isn't what it was just a few years ago, it would be fair to assume some error in my reporting of the actual work I did inside HFP. :-)

So... I went ahead and recompiled a cropped section starting over from the original raw files. I'll post those in a bit, and will leave a note here when I do.

I can say this stack was a little easier than most, due to the lighting that was used. Lighting could have been a little softer, but I didn't have to deal with the washout that occurs when shooting into a film canister. I did do some touch-up inside HFP for the dorsal view image (in the densely hirsute area between the chelicerae), but it was pretty quick-and-dirty.

… Jay Barnes, 28 December, 2007 - 1:26pm

...

Short series of 100% crops posted here.

… Jay Barnes, 28 December, 2007 - 3:33pm

Equipment

One more quick question. Was this shot with the setup you show here (sans film canister)?

… Jeff Gruber, 1 January, 2008 - 8:00pm

A few changes from that setup

I didn't use the 2X teleconverter, and probably won't be using it in the future.

The macro rail is still in place because it's somewhat convenient for initial camera position, but not used while shooting, and not very useful for this work.

For focus adjustments I attached the specimen similar to what is shown here.

… Jay Barnes, 2 January, 2008 - 12:33am

I use Helicon Focus and it se

I use Helicon Focus and it seems to do the trick pretty well, though I'm nowhere near as proficient with it as Jay

… Will Chatfield-Taylor, 28 December, 2007 - 11:55am

You're definition of "a littl

You're definition of "a little more detail" deviates rather significantly from that of most people. Most people that means "I moved the camera closer a bit" I think I can see the openings in the fangs where the venom comes out!

… Will Chatfield-Taylor, 28 December, 2007 - 2:42am