Fern sporangia and expelled spores

This is a high-magnification studio shot of part of a single fern sporus. It shows individual sporongia and spores that have been expelled through the ‘tubes’. I enjoy this type of ‘technical’ photography although the end results don’t usually give the emotional feeling that comes with wonderful landscape/flora/general macro/ etc photography. However being able to capture tiny but detailed scenes that we cannot normally see is a satisfaction of its own.

Specific Feedback Requested

Just interested in general thoughts about this type of photography and whether high magnification images are suitable for posting here.

Technical Details

Taken in a studio setup with DSLR and approximately 15cm of extension followed by a reversed Raynox 150 (to give infinity focus), and then a Nikon Plan 10x (f0.25) infinity objective. I can’t remember how many shots there were (not good at recording things) but probabaly about 60-70 that were then stacked in Helicon.
Magnification is about 10-15:1 and distance between each shot was 8 microns. The exposure I use is always 4 seconds under constant lighting using 3 LED lamps through diffusion material.

Little or no processing, just cropping, slight brightening, and web sharpening.

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Wow, Phil, this makes for quite a nice abstract shot. It sure would make a nice jig saw puzzle. I enjoy getting to see things of nature magnified to where we can view what otherwise would be impossible to see. I had no idea what I was looking at so I’m glad that you described. Nature is amazing!

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This is amazing!! I would have thought larvae of some sort. I had no idea fern spores were so complex.

I’m in awe of what you can capture with that setup. I got lost after 15 cm of extension, but that was enough to blow my mind! 60-70 stacked at 8 micron spacing – amazing!! I had to look up the diameter of a human hair for reference – it varies from about 20 to 180 microns.

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oooh wow. It’s so amazing things like this exist under our very noses, but we never get to see. Technical aspects aside, this has a lot going for it in terms of texture and shape. The individual spores provide a nice lift of color. The sporongia remind me of a fossil of an ancient sea bed. Honeybees in a hive also comes to mind. The light is so even (as is probably necessary) that you could have a go at shaping it with some dodging and burning. If you felt like it.

I really like this type of thing and while it may not have an emotional response beyond curiosity and wonder, there is a lot to be said for those. I’ve been toying with the idea of moving to more than 1:1 in macro with some extension tubes and this is another nudge for me even though it won’t be approaching this level of magnification.

Thanks for your comments @Shirley_Freeman @Diane_Miller @_Kris . I wasn’t sure what might happen with this one as it is a bit technical.

Like you Kristen, I did think the light was too even (something that is always the aim with high mag work!) so I tried darkening some areas, vignetting, etc. I didn’t really like the result so went back to the origional instead.

In terms of field photography, 2:1 is a good magnification ( only needs about 90-100 microns between shots for good DOF) but I find more than that is a bit too difficult to manage without a lot of field gear. For me, even a tripod is a bit much field gear, so for anything above 2:1 I end up using my indoor rig instead. After joing NPN it is now quite clear that I will DEFINITELY need to try to make peace with my new tripod.

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Wow, Phil!

I wish I had seen this before now, you posted this about a month before I joined NPN again. This is the kind of work I used to try hard at achieving from about 1999 - 2002.
I remember when Helicon first came out (around 2005 or so?) but life stuff prevented me from having the time to mess with it during that period. Hopefully I can get back at it now that I have the time.
I did a fair amount of micro collaboration with a fella named Danny who was also from NZ, he and I were members of the original NPN.
Back then Danny and I were making focus stacked images manually and as you can imagine, it wasn’t easy and the results weren’t great but we had fun trying. I would dig for some of those images in the many hard drives I have stashed away (images of things like Aphids, Mandibles of Praying Mantis, Bee Larvae, etc.), but I kind of prefer to remember them as being pretty good (meaning if I were to actually look at them again, I would find them to be much worse than I like to remember :slight_smile: )
We were using extension tubes, thick magnifying glasses scavenged from old zoom lenses, 2 & 3x objective lenses from microscopes or whatever we could get our hands on (within a poor person’s budget), some worked, some didn’t.
I don’t think we went over 5 or 6:1 or so but todays stacking software makes it easier, not easy, just easier.
Back then I used what I called a “Sled” which was a long and wide camera mount that would slide in a channel mounted to the table, the movement was done by a fine threaded jack screw behind the camera mount, it was crude but it worked.

This is amazingly pure and clear, I love the details and the even lighting, the colors and the contrast are awesome.
The results you have here would have had Danny and myself jumping around like silly school kids if we had achieved it.
It’s a little sad that more people don’t find this kind of work more interesting, I guess it’s a matter of personal interest.

I’d love to see more of what you have if you are willing to share?

Anyway, VERY WELL DONE! :slight_smile:

Merry Christmas @Merv. Sounds like we have very similar photographic backgrounds. I also spent a lot of time with manual stacking many years ago, although it was always plants rather than insects for me. I first became interested in photographing tiny things when I was also tiny, but it was during my PhD studies when I was photographing thin sections of soil through a microscope, and a friend was using a scanning electron microscope for the same thing, that I was properly captured with photomacrography.
Before automated stacking (and well before in-camera stacking) became a thing, I remember spending many hours flat on the ground making tiny manual adjustments to a camera platform using a vernier scale. Happy and rewarding, and long, days gone by.

I posted the fern sporus image soon after I joined NPN to see if photomacrography is of interest to many other members, but clearly it isn’t so I haven’t posted anything much like that since. Nonethless it, along with macrophotography in general, remains my passion so I’ll probably look to another forum for that work. Most likely photomacrography.net that I look into now and again when I try to solve some problem or other. Rick Littlefield (Zerene owner) is very active there and seems to be regarded as the guru of such work as his knowledge of it is astounding.

After having used bellows for quite some time, I now use the D850 with extensions of varying lengths and a reversed Raynox to get infinity focus, then an infinity microscope lens of varying focal length on the end. That works well as long as the camera has a good sensor such as Sony or the better Nikons. The D850 uses a Sony sensor I think. I use the wee G9 for general photography but if the magnification is greater than about 1.3:1 the image from m4/3 is poor as it can’t resolve very small detail that is otherwise apparent in a micro-scene.

Thanks for looking and your interest Merv. Cheers.

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Wow, now that sounds very familiar! Geez, I couldn’t do it that way again at this stage of my life so automated rails and an app on my iPad mini as a remote viewing screen is the way to go for me.

A scanning electron microscope? wow, I would have drooled like Homer Simpson over one of those back in the day.

I’ve been lurking for a couple of weeks over at photomacrography, there are some stunning images there, I wish they had the thumbnails similar to NPN but that’s a small nit for me.

I’ve seen some of Rik’s work and read some of his articles, he is a wealth of knowledge!
Is it Rik or Rick? I always thought his name was spelled without a C but I’m probably mistaken.

Yeah, the sensor on the Sony was the main reason for going that route, I’ve had in mind to get back into micro work and that was the driver for that particular camera choice.
I sold some of my business equipment that I don’t use anymore to be able to buy my current gear but future gear will be budget controlled.
I still have most of my micro gear but I do want to try the Laowa 25mm, 2.5-5x lens, it is very sharp.

1.3:1 is pretty darn good for out in the field stuff IMHO.

You’re right, we do have very similar backgrounds in photography and I may take you up on your offer to contact you when I get started using Zerene and/or Helicon.

Thanks, Phil and my pleasure! :slight_smile: