For this image I increased the focus depth-resolution and also slightly changed the Helicon Focus stacking parameters for a little more detail.
A 36-frame focus-stacked image of the eye region of a butterfly
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22-frame focus-stacked image of the eye region of a butterfly.
As it has been drizzling all day I have been doing some microscopy while my wife worked in the greenhouse. Knowing I was working with the microscope she brought me in a dead butterfly from the greenhouse. It went straight under the microscope for a 22-frame focus-stacked image stitched together using that brilliant piece of software Helicon Focus.
Structural colour
The irridescent blue seen in this macrophoto of a Morpho Rhetenor butterfly is due to structural colour – not pigment. The butterfly’s wing scales have microstructure which act like a specialised diffraction grating, so it is an interference/diffraction grating effect that gives the striking blue colour – visible over a wide range of angles. It is in fact an example of a natural photonic crystal structure – something that I researched for a few years at the University of Southampton. Possibly one of the most impressive Icons of Science meeting Art 🙂
See my 20-page Review Article titled “Biomimetically Inspired Photonic Nanomaterials” for more information.
Enormous cloud panorama
The original of this image was created using 23 overlapping frames (Canon 5D MkII and 50mm prime lens) giving a 13739 x 7896 pixel image 🙂 Photoshop struggled with the 1Gb file.
Apparently this image was shown on last night’s (26/05/2011) Meridian weather – but I missed it 🙁
Comfrey – a Bee magnet
We brought back a bunch of Comfrey from the allotment to put in the garden as it was clearly a powerful Bee magnet. It’s kept in a pot as it seems to be pretty invasive. However – true to form – along come the Bees who seem to find this plant irresistible.
Some more insect macros from yesterday in the garden
A couple of hoverflies and a Red Admiral visited the garden yesterday 🙂
It’s a beautiful sunny day in Brockenhurst – it’s macro time – it’s BEE TIME again!
An obliging model for the flower:
Our regularly flowering cactus has just produced the first flower of 2011
Amazing fragrance from these flowers – wish it could be bottled 🙂
Canon 5D MkII HD video
And here’s a video of the nesting Blue Tits taken with the Canon 5D MkII the 100-400mm zoom lens and the 2x teleconverter. Manual focus, ISO 100, program mode. This video is an MP4 conversion and is only around 20Mb or so in size – the original HD video straight off the camera is around 2Gb and of much higher quality. Seeing these little guys full screen and in tight focus on the monitor is pretty amazing.
Blue Tit nest box
Here are a few seconds at the Blue Tits’ nest box with the Sony video camera and its native 18-200mm lens (which is an exceptional lens!).
I am about to try out the Canon 100-400mm zoom lens with the 2x extender on the same camera – should be interesting 🙂