Some focus stacking Experiments

[Arizona Chris]

Greetings all,

 

Now that we have a stationary camera on our new trinocuar stereo microscope, I tried some focus stacks, something I had never been able to do on fossils before!  (I do it at work for geological specimens)   I used Picolay - a free ware that works very well right out of the gate.  you can get it here:

 

http://www.picolay.de/

 

So here are some initial results.  First, a tall spired gastropod that is about 2mm in size.  I had 6 levels of focus from background to tip of the spire.  First a single normal shot like I wold have had to settle for in the olden days:

 

and now after a 6 step stack:

 

Here is an Aviculopectin rim from the Fort Apache Limestone found recently, a very large and difficult piece to normally photograph.  First the single frame:

 

Now a 9 layer stack:

 

 

I can get used to this!  Comments?

[ynot]

Looking good!

[Ludwigia]

Thanks for the link.

[Malcolmt]

That looks good... should really give it a try one of these days.

[Arizona Chris]

ITs a lot of fun!  Now If I can get some automation into it, it will be even more so.

[Rumi]

I have not used Picolay, so I can't comment about it.  I like another freeware image stacking program, CombineZP.  It has several alternative stacking methods available, so if one doesn't do what you want, another method very well might.  It is  strongly automated, so that one "run" of the program does everything required: alignment and balancing of the images in the stack, as many of the available stacking methods as you want to try, and output of the final images for comparison.

[The QCC]

Picolay stacking software works very well and does not crash, unlike CombineZP.
Picolay is designed to work on modern computers and is actively updated where CombineZP has not been updated since June of 1999.

 

[Peat Burns]

I was not aware of such software!  Back in the day we used a device that moved a band of light across the specimen while the aperture was open.  Thanks for posting this.  Can't wait to try it.

 

It looks like Photoshop does a great job focus stacking, too

[ynot]

Whenever I try to download "picolay" it is blocked by My virus protection software. Aurgh!

[Kane]

Just now, ynot said:

Whenever I try to download "picolay" it is blocked by My virus protection software. Aurgh!

Is there a way you can temporarily disable it? I'm sure if you open the settings on the program you might be able to do that?

[The QCC]

Download the ZIP version. Most antivirus programmes accept ZIP files as a download.

 

[ynot]

OK now I have it in My download file. Just have to get the time to take some new pictures to stack.

 

Thanks Guys!

 

Regards,

Tony

[Arizona Chris]

Here is another example I did a few days ago, of the only rugose coral we ever found in 250 pounds of limestones from the Permian fort apache limestone.  This is a HUGE range of focus and required 15 layers.  but that was easy to do and picolay was really fast.