With a 4-way rail you can do macro panoramas. You can couple it with focus stacking too. This screenshot shows a number of images that went into making a panorama focus stack of a grasshopper head. Here's is the full size shot of an image that with all 134 images put into one large panorama and focus stacked:
>22MB>19,192 x 4,085http://www.mediafire.com/view/4yc79le2ata5cie/DSC_8698a.JPGIt was one of the first few I've attempted. It took a rather long time to do and I messed up in a few places with seams. It is automated focus stacking and a lot of fixing that by hand. The lens and setup is the same as listed in
>>3458724 with added tripod and 4-way rail.
>>3458738You need to move the camera back and forth to move the focus plane (DOF) across the subject. You take photos at every x increment. Then in Photoshop or whatever image editor you use the focus stack function. In Photoshop that entails stacking all the image into a single PDF file, one image per layer, selecting all of them, and auto-blending them. Search "Photoshop focus stack" and there should be a few tutorials. The more extreme the magnification the thinner the DOF and the more image you need to take. 1:1 is pretty easy and you can normally get by with 1-3 images. The 7.16:1 in this thread can take 5-50 images, depending on the subject and what you want to photo. Actual professionals may use 1,000s of images in a single image and tons of hand editing the masks for each layer. I've only done a little bit of hand editing and it takes fucking forever.
>>3458749These are living insects:
>>3458723 >>3458724 >>3458727 >>3458731This is a freezer-dead insect:
>>3458729This is a wing lost from a butterfly using a 4-way rail to do increments:
>>3458730These are handheld and living:
>>3458723 >>3458724 >>3458732Often times, I can get an insect to hold still long enough for a few handheld shots at 7.16:1 and other times I can use a 4-way rail for the shots, indoors.
