Merrill rust

[Scottelly]

Today I finally got out and shot some more photos with my new (to me) Sigma SD1 Merrill. Here is a couple of photos processed in the latest version of SPP that my old MacBook Air computer will run (SPP 6.4.0). The processing seems quite fast, compared to what I remember from processing sample Merrill raw photos a year ago or so (maybe two years ago).




A rusty sewer attachment (no idea what it does)




Rusty water pipe (not much life left in it, I would guess)

I hand-held these photos using my 17-50mm f2.8 OS lens.

If you have any photos of rust that you shot with your Merrill camera, I'd love it if you could add one or two (or three) into this thread. It would be nice to get a good collection of rust photos going here.

--
Scott Barton Kennelly

http://www.bigprintphotos.com

 

[xpatUSA]

Today I finally got out and shot some more photos with my new (to me) Sigma SD1 Merrill. Here is a couple of photos processed in the latest version of SPP that my old MacBook Air computer will run (SPP 6.4.0). The processing seems quite fast, compared to what I remember from processing sample Merrill raw photos a year ago or so (maybe two years ago).


A rusty sewer attachment (no idea what it does)


Rusty water pipe (not much life left in it, I would guess)

I hand-held these photos using my 17-50mm f2.8 OS lens.

If you have any photos of rust that you shot with your Merrill camera, I'd love it if you could add one or two (or three) into this thread. It would be nice to get a good collection of rust photos going here.

Good theme, Scott. Are pre-Merrill rust shots allowed?

In the first image, maybe it would have been better to have focused on the top front bolt and maybe use f/11 for a bit more DOF?

Lovely focus and sense of depth in the second shot!

Maybe with rust shots, 'Vivid' color mode might produce more "striking" output?

--
"What we've got hyah is Failyah to Communicate": 'Cool Hand Luke' 1967.

 

[Scottelly]

Today I finally got out and shot some more photos with my new (to me) Sigma SD1 Merrill. Here is a couple of photos processed in the latest version of SPP that my old MacBook Air computer will run (SPP 6.4.0). The processing seems quite fast, compared to what I remember from processing sample Merrill raw photos a year ago or so (maybe two years ago).


A rusty sewer attachment (no idea what it does)


Rusty water pipe (not much life left in it, I would guess)

I hand-held these photos using my 17-50mm f2.8 OS lens.

If you have any photos of rust that you shot with your Merrill camera, I'd love it if you could add one or two (or three) into this thread. It would be nice to get a good collection of rust photos going here.

Good theme, Scott. Are pre-Merrill rust shots allowed?

Thanks Ted. Feel free to post any rust shot you like Ted, but please warn us if it's not a Merrill rust shot. The thread is indeed titled Merrill rust, so I'm hoping it won't become a mish-mash of Foveon rust photos. I believe the Merrill sensor (with a good lens) has the advantage, when portraying rust.

In the first image, maybe it would have been better to have focused on the top front bolt and maybe use f/11 for a bit more DOF?

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted. I think f8 is as far as I'm willing to go. I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that. Besides, I don't know how a hand-held focus stack would turn out. I figure it'd likely be a complete failure. I didn't take my tripod with me, because I just wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. I might go try a focus stack with the 70mm f2.8 macro set to f5.6 in a little while. If it works out well, I'll post the result here.

Lovely focus and sense of depth in the second shot!

Thanks Ted.

Maybe with rust shots, 'Vivid' color mode might produce more "striking" output?

Maybe so Ted. I just never use "Vivid" color mode, so I didn't think of it. I'll try that.

--
"What we've got hyah is Failyah to Communicate": 'Cool Hand Luke' 1967.

--
Scott Barton Kennelly

http://www.bigprintphotos.com

 

[DavidMillier]

--
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/

 

[DavidMillier]

--
Galleries and website: http://www.whisperingcat.co.uk/
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmillier/

 

[xpatUSA]

Good theme, Scott. Are pre-Merrill rust shots allowed?

Thanks Ted. Feel free to post any rust shot you like Ted, but please warn us if it's not a Merrill rust shot. The thread is indeed titled Merrill rust, so I'm hoping it won't become a mish-mash of Foveon rust photos. I believe the Merrill sensor (with a good lens) has the advantage, when portraying rust.

Good point, Merrills rule!

In the first image, maybe it would have been better to have focused on the top front bolt and maybe use f/11 for a bit more DOF?

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted.

Well, the front of the top is out of focus and the focal plane seems to on those side bolts and the top connection -whereas much of the rust is not in focus.





Was that your intention?

I think f/8 is as far as I'm willing to go.

Your call. A lot of close-up shooters go much higher, then recover sharpness in post.

I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that.

In that shot, you filled the frame. Another way to get more DOF is to step back and shoot with the expectation of cropping in post . . .

Maybe with rust shots, 'Vivid' color mode might produce more "striking" output?

Maybe so Ted. I just never use "Vivid" color mode, so I didn't think of it. I'll try that.

Please tell us what you find, should be of interest to rust-shooters.

--
"What we've got hyah is Failyah to Communicate": 'Cool Hand Luke' 1967.

 

[rf-design]

SD1M OOC JPG, 17-70mm OS, all pics within 30 minutes

 

[Scottelly]

Good theme, Scott. Are pre-Merrill rust shots allowed?

Thanks Ted. Feel free to post any rust shot you like Ted, but please warn us if it's not a Merrill rust shot. The thread is indeed titled Merrill rust, so I'm hoping it won't become a mish-mash of Foveon rust photos. I believe the Merrill sensor (with a good lens) has the advantage, when portraying rust.

Good point, Merrills rule!

In the first image, maybe it would have been better to have focused on the top front bolt and maybe use f/11 for a bit more DOF?

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted.

Well, the front of the top is out of focus and the focal plane seems to on those side bolts and the top connection -whereas much of the rust is not in focus.



Was that your intention?

Actually I intended to focus on the side bolts, because I figured that would give the best view of the rust on the corners and particularly that part on the left, in the sunlight. I also wanted to get some of the body of the device into focus, and I figured almost the whole device would be out of focus if I just focused on the bolt head closest to the camera.

I think f/8 is as far as I'm willing to go.

Your call. A lot of close-up shooters go much higher, then recover sharpness in post.

I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that.

In that shot, you filled the frame. Another way to get more DOF is to step back and shoot with the expectation of cropping in post . . .

Maybe with rust shots, 'Vivid' color mode might produce more "striking" output?

Maybe so Ted. I just never use "Vivid" color mode, so I didn't think of it. I'll try that.

Please tell us what you find, should be of interest to rust-shooters.

Hopefully so. It looks like this will be a multi-day experiment though, as you will see below Ted.

--
"What we've got hyah is Failyah to Communicate": 'Cool Hand Luke' 1967.

Here's my first try Ted. It is made with a few photos exported from raw to jpegs, and then stacked in GIMP, and processed using selective alignment and erasing. This way I revealed the parts on the lower layers that were in better focus. It's not the best version I can imagine, but I think it's a decent starting try. I'll have to shoot a few more photos next time, because when I inspect them at 100% I find that the depth of field is just too darn shallow for a half-dozen photos to capture all the parts in perfect focus, when shooting at f5.6 (darn it!). Next time I'll make micro adjustments from one shot to the next, and I'll probably end up with more than a dozen photos to process.


You will see that I cropped the image.

This was exported from GIMP to .jpg at 90% quality (maybe too compressed to retain all the fine detail).

As you can see, I tried the vivid color mode, and I think it looks about right. Thanks for that suggestion Ted.

--
Scott Barton Kennelly
http://www.bigprintphotos.com

 

[Scottelly]

BTW, I downloaded the trial version of Affinity Photo, in order to use the focus stacking abilities of that program, and the darn thing wouldn't work for me. I mean it wouldn't even open. I don't know why. My computer has the minimum operating system and more than the minimum processor and RAM required to run it. That's why I used GIMP to do the focus stack manually . . . and part of the reason why it's such a bad example of a focus stacked image.

Hopefully I can make a better one tomorrow. Stay tuned.

 

[xpatUSA]

In the first image, maybe it would have been better to have focused on the top front bolt and maybe use f/11 for a bit more DOF?

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted.

Well, the front of the top is out of focus and the focal plane seems to on those side bolts and the top connection -whereas much of the rust is not in focus.



Was that your intention?

Actually I intended to focus on the side bolts, because I figured that would give the best view of the rust on the corners and particularly that part on the left, in the sunlight. I also wanted to get some of the body of the device into focus, and I figured almost the whole device would be out of focus if I just focused on the bolt head closest to the camera.

I think you would be better served to learn from good old DOFMaster before embarking on focus-stacking. By which I mean that understanding the basics of DOF could have saved your shot which, to me, is not working (sorry to be blunt).

I'm guessing the subject to be approx 10" square at the top. If you had stepped back to 6 ft away, with your beloved f/8 . . voila!



http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

A DOF of 1.38ft would likely have had the whole subject in focus at the expense of a little cropping later.

--
"What we've got hyah is Failyah to Communicate": 'Cool Hand Luke' 1967.

 

[mike earussi]

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted. I think f8 is as far as I'm willing to go. I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that. Besides, I don't know how a hand-held focus stack would turn out. I figure it'd likely be a complete failure. I didn't take my tripod with me, because I just wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. I might go try a focus stack with the 70mm f2.8 macro set to f5.6 in a little while. If it works out well, I'll post the result here.

I've done a lot of hand held focus stacking and the key is to realize that your hands move no matter how hard you try to keep them still. So just expect to have to crop the outer 30% of the photo and so frame loosely.

My technique is to set the camera to multishot, practice the focus range you want and then hold down the shutter at the same time you're changing focus. This should give you seven shots in the SD1. I then process them in PS, which works fine.

Scott Barton Kennelly
http://www.bigprintphotos.com

 

[Scottelly]

A little cropping Ted? lol

You're talking about doubling the distance . . . thereby requiring me to crop to 1/4 the number of pixels . . . effectively making my 14.7 MP photo into a 3.5 MP photo.



Actually though, I did have to move the camera back to shoot with the 70mm macro at f5.6 Ted. The depth of field was less than 1" in each of those shots. I think if I had doubled the distance, I would have increased the depth of field to what? 2" maybe? I guess that would have been an improvement . . . at the expense of detail. But that's not why I shoot with a Merrill camera rather than an SD14 or SD15.

 

[Scottelly]

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted. I think f8 is as far as I'm willing to go. I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that. Besides, I don't know how a hand-held focus stack would turn out. I figure it'd likely be a complete failure. I didn't take my tripod with me, because I just wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. I might go try a focus stack with the 70mm f2.8 macro set to f5.6 in a little while. If it works out well, I'll post the result here.

I've done a lot of hand held focus stacking and the key is to realize that your hands move no matter how hard you try to keep them still. So just expect to have to crop the outer 30% of the photo and so frame loosely.

My technique is to set the camera to multishot, practice the focus range you want and then hold down the shutter at the same time you're changing focus. This should give you seven shots in the SD1. I then process them in PS, which works fine.

Scott Barton Kennelly
http://www.bigprintphotos.com

Thanks Mike. I got out the tripod and focused in slightly different places for each of a series of photos, but then I discovered how much difference in size that makes the subject. Hmmm . . . so maybe hand-holding would have worked after-all.

 

[mike earussi]

Yeah, but I didn't want to compromise the detail in the rust Ted. I think f8 is as far as I'm willing to go. I think a focus stack with 3 or more shots would be the best way to go, but I guess I'm too lazy for that. Besides, I don't know how a hand-held focus stack would turn out. I figure it'd likely be a complete failure. I didn't take my tripod with me, because I just wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. I might go try a focus stack with the 70mm f2.8 macro set to f5.6 in a little while. If it works out well, I'll post the result here.

I've done a lot of hand held focus stacking and the key is to realize that your hands move no matter how hard you try to keep them still. So just expect to have to crop the outer 30% of the photo and so frame loosely.

My technique is to set the camera to multishot, practice the focus range you want and then hold down the shutter at the same time you're changing focus. This should give you seven shots in the SD1. I then process them in PS, which works fine.

Scott Barton Kennelly
http://www.bigprintphotos.com

Thanks Mike. I got out the tripod and focused in slightly different places for each of a series of photos, but then I discovered how much difference in size that makes the subject. Hmmm . . . so maybe hand-holding would have worked after-all.

I've never noticed any appreciable size difference, but then I've never looked for any either. But since PS puts them together so well it's also something I've never had to worry about.

--
Scott Barton Kennelly
http://www.bigprintphotos.com

 

[target5]

The IQ of these photos shoot with Merrill is exceptional, thank you for sharing.

 

[Zone8]

Scottelly wrote: It would be nice to get a good collection of rust photos going here.

Does that include Rusty Fairy Annes?

Nicely taken shots. The SD1M is great for fine detail.

--
Zone8: Although I am a handsome genius, when I stand in front of a mirror, I vaguely recognise the ugly idjit standing on the other side!
LINK: For B+W with Epson 1400 (and other 6-ink models) using black ink only PLUS other useful tips including update covering nozzle clearing:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm
Cleaning DSLR Sensors, including Kodak DSLR Factory Cleaning method:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/KodakDCS-sensorcleaning.htm (Includes links to "bassotto's" images)
Solving back/front focus problems on Sigma and most other DSLRs
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/backfocus.htm
PDF format list of lenses you can print or download - covers Italian Flag YES/NO for DCS 14n but applies to others. http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/ItiFlagLensList.pdf

 

[Scottelly]

The IQ of these photos shoot with Merrill is exceptional, thank you for sharing.

You're welcome! Thank you for the compliment on them. I exported them at level 10 compression, and when I used SPP to adjust them I removed all noise reduction (set the dots all the way to the left). I also reduced sharpening from the standard setting in the middle to one step to the left (-.1) of middle. The first two photos I posted were shot in "Standard" color mode with the white balance set to sunlight, and I did not change any of that when processing. I ONLY used SPP. Many people use other programs to "enhance" or otherwise process their photos after exporting them from SPP. I rarely do . . . though I have no doubt that someone with a good eye and skills with GIMP or Photoshop could probably improve the look of those photos.

 

[Scottelly]

Scottelly wrote: It would be nice to get a good collection of rust photos going here.

Does that include Rusty Fairy Annes?

Oh, ça ne fait rien.

Nicely taken shots. The SD1M is great for fine detail.

Thanks!

 

[xpatUSA]

A little cropping Ted? lol

You're talking about doubling the distance . . . thereby requiring me to crop to 1/4 the number of pixels . . . effectively making my 14.7 MP photo into a 3.5 MP photo.

Scott,

You won't step back.

You won't crop.

You won't go over f/8.

"As thee make thy bed, so shalt thou lie" ;-)

Actually though, I did have to move the camera back to shoot with the 70mm macro at f5.6 Ted. The depth of field was less than 1" in each of those shots.

According to DOFMaster, at 70mm and f/8 and 1" DOF you would have shot from 2-1/2ft away.

I think if I had doubled the distance, I would have increased the depth of field to what? 2" maybe?

In this case, doubling the distance to 5ft would have got you 4" - which shows me how much you used the calculator I linked you to.

I guess that would have been an improvement . . . at the expense of detail.

Indeed. Quite a dilemma. Best to shoot only 2D objects, like butterflies from the side, then you can have it all. ;-)

But that's not why I shoot with a Merrill camera rather than an SD14 or SD15.

Gosh, 5um versus 7.8um pitch, a huge difference! You DEFINITELY need an H.

Or 100MP:

https://www.getdpi.com/wp/2016/01/what-can-you-do-with-100mp/

Stepping out of this discussion - good luck with close-ups.

 

[Scottelly]

A little cropping Ted? lol

You're talking about doubling the distance . . . thereby requiring me to crop to 1/4 the number of pixels . . . effectively making my 14.7 MP photo into a 3.5 MP photo.

Scott,

You won't step back.

You won't crop.

You won't go over f/8.

"As thee make thy bed, so shalt thou lie" ;-)

Actually though, I did have to move the camera back to shoot with the 70mm macro at f5.6 Ted. The depth of field was less than 1" in each of those shots.

According to DOFMaster, at 70mm and f/8 and 1" DOF you would have shot from 2-1/2ft away.

I think if I had doubled the distance, I would have increased the depth of field to what? 2" maybe?

In this case, doubling the distance to 5ft would have got you 4" - which shows me how much you used the calculator I linked you to.

I guess that would have been an improvement . . . at the expense of detail.

Indeed. Quite a dilemma. Best to shoot only 2D objects, like butterflies from the side, then you can have it all. ;-)

But that's not why I shoot with a Merrill camera rather than an SD14 or SD15.

Gosh, 5um versus 7.8um pitch, a huge difference! You DEFINITELY need an H.

Or 100MP:

https://www.getdpi.com/wp/2016/01/what-can-you-do-with-100mp/

Stepping out of this discussion - good luck with close-ups.