A beautiful morning dawned with sun shining. I filled the watering can to add moisture to my chocolate mint plants.
As the water sprinkled down upon the planter I noticed a tiny flash of brilliant green. Close inspection showed the smallest preying mantis I had ever seen. It was approximately 1.25 inches. As luck would have it, I had a macro lens on loan from Olympus to test, the M. Zukio ED 60mm f/2.8 macro.
Rush to shoot!
Thinking there would be little time for a live subject I raced for my camera and macro lens. I realized very quickly that handholding with that magnification was not going to be a winner in any way, shape or form. Back I went to the studio to grab a tripod and figure a way to get it close to my subject.
It took a few manipulations to find the combination that was steady and close enough to fill the frame.
Meanwhile, to my surprise, the mantis waited patiently through my machinations.
Refined shoot
Once I started photographing in earnest the reality of macro reared its head. The depth of field is extremely shallow at that magnification even when stopped down to f/22, which meant it was time to add focus stacking to the mix. I wasn’t sure I’d have enough time to get the stack completed before the mantis started to move.
Fortunately, the OM-D E-M1 Mark III has a focus stacking feature built into the camera. I chose a focus step of one and a Step and Repeat of 25 frames.
A quick review of the first stack of 25 showed I could get the depth of field needed in 15 frames. Choosing the number of frames captured allows for focus to fall off leaving a pleasing background. I don’t always want sharpness from front to back. A quick adjustment was made and I began photographing numerous sequences.
Then it was time to tweak my camera’s position to get a portrait with the mantis looking at the lens. Aided by opening two of the tripod legs to the flat position and extending one leg to the ground below the planter, I also used the tilting head of the Fotopro Eagle E6L (B&H | Amazon).
Success! After a series captures, the mantis looked at the camera and held the pose through the entire sequence. Lens was set to the closest focusing distance.
Processing
Attaining the images is just the first part of the job when shooting a focus stack. Off to the computer to download and choose the 15 shot stack with no movement in between frames. The images were processed for color and clarity, then stacked into Photoshop Layers.
All of my layers were then selected, and I went to the Edit menu, and chose Auto-Align All Layers. This step is critical, as focus changes impact the image size a tiny bit.
Then I went to Edit > Auto-Blend All Layers. Photoshop will build masks and allow the sharp areas to be shown.
A note of caution is to look carefully at the result. Depending upon the amount of contrast or how much overlap each image has, there may be small areas of blur. These can be fixed by adjusting the masks by hand.
Final processing tweaks
Artistic license is taken with final clean up. Since the eye goes to the area of highest contrast extra leaves were added and dark areas and distractions were removed.
Apparently the mantis’ right antenna was moving during the capture and did not record due to the 1/8s shutter speed. To get around this, I added an antenna from another image in the series. Can’t have our subject looking less than stellar, can we?
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
Over the lockdown period I was doing a lot more macro photography. I have a Canon macro lens that goes up to 5x magnification! It’s a really hard lens to use at first, but with some artificial lighting I got some great results in the end. I haven’t got into focus stacking yet, although I did do a little bit of a test. There is so much to explore even before you get into focus stacking. Macro is like opening up a whole new world, it’s absolutely amazing. The details and the way insects and plant life is put together… Read more »
Macro is a whole ‘nother world indeed. Wait until you start the stacking process.
Really good article Bob. I never realised Photoshop so effectively processed focussed stacks like that, hence had never tried the technique before. Also love that Fotopro Eagle E6L for Macro work, it looks so much easier than a conventional tripod for this type of work.
Glad you enjoyed it David. Photoshop is extremely powerful, I consider her my Muse! Really nice part of the Fotopro Eagle tripod E6L is that you can also tilt the camera straight up OR straight down.