Lichen Garden

I found a limb in my yard with an amazing array of lichen.  The rust colored area in the second shot appears to be lichen also, and it forms the scolloped structures at its edge.  C&C certainly welcome.  Thanks for looking.

Nice, so much variety in a small space.

Very high f stops though, I wonder what they’d look like stacked ?

Jim

Thanks, jim mij.  High f-stop, good tripod, remote shutter release, and stacking is avoided.

jmiller1948 wrote:

Thanks, jim mij. High f-stop, good tripod, remote shutter release, and stacking is avoided.

Sweet shots.

I would love to avoid stacking and certainly stopping down will help with that, but at f/32 do you think that you are losing sharpness? Here are a couple of similar shots I did stacked:

Your shots, especially the first, are excellent.  My macro lens is a Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 VR.  I have not noticed any obvious diffraction when shooting at very small apertures.  I may be wrong, but I don't think macros are as subject to diffraction as other lenses.  I like the results I get shooting at those apertures, so I'm happy.

Thanks, Rodger.  I am intrigued by the vast number of lichen species that can be found in about every environment on earth.  I've almost never seen as many different varieties on one area as were on this section of limb.

You have inspired me to try to shoot my own lichen garden - and that's when I began to appreciate your skill!

Shot at f8 indoors on a day of very poor natural light, with added light from LumeCube2, hand-held. Background is ordinary copy paper - don't know how to do it on a black background.

I shoot M43 with a GX9 and Olympus 30mm macro lens, and this was originally a stack of 45. I culled it to 30 TIFFs then stacked them in Helicon Focus. I found the stacking difficult, and cursed the cropping that occurs when shooting Post Focus. I dislike tripods and used a monopod to try to keep the camera fixed, but even that was awkward. Placing the subjects, the camera, the light and the monopod made me quite bad-tempered! C&C and your own improvements very welcome.

maggiemole wrote:

You have inspired me to try to shoot my own lichen garden - and that's when I began to appreciate your skill!

Shot at f8 indoors on a day of very poor natural light, with added light from LumeCube2, hand-held. Background is ordinary copy paper - don't know how to do it on a black background.

I shoot M43 with a GX9 and Olympus 30mm macro lens, and this was originally a stack of 45. I culled it to 30 TIFFs then stacked them in Helicon Focus. I found the stacking difficult, and cursed the cropping that occurs when shooting Post Focus. I dislike tripods and used a monopod to try to keep the camera fixed, but even that was awkward. Placing the subjects, the camera, the light and the monopod made me quite bad-tempered! C&C and your own improvements very welcome.

Thanks for the compliments, maggiemole.  First, I think a tripod is essential.  At macro range the slightest camera shake is deadly to IQ.  With the small apertures needed to get enough DoF to avoid stacking 50 images, shutter speeds are quite slow, making any motion even worse.  The black background is easy: I use a piece of black poster board and then adjust the black point in post to make it look even blacker.  The black background keeps the shadows like you produced from being seen too.

Get your tripod out and give it another go.  Those gold lichen species would look great with more magnification and against a black background.