There are a number of stacking applications out there, but what sets Zerene Stacker apart is its ability to align photos.  This is critical for insect photography as most photos are hand held.  This means that the chances that they will perfectly align are practically nil.

Zerene Stacker is extremely easy to use, though it does contain an impressive list of options.  It also contains a very powerful retouching feature that allows one to explain from which image to take different parts of the final image.  This is extremely useful in a number of cases, though with care I have found that it is often not necessary.  Typically I use the retouching feature when I specifically do not want a particular part of the final image to be in focus.  Often this is for artistic reasons.  I want the insect to be in focus but not this part of a leaf, etc.

There’s a common expression that a picture is worth a thousand words, so without further ado I’ll show you what it can do.

The following are three unedited photos of a stink bug I took recently.

As you can see, each of these images has a different part in focus.  The image at the top has only the antenna in focus.  The image in the middle has the face and the front of the body in focus, while the one on the bottom has the top of the shell.

Also note that they are not completely aligned.  In particular the bottom image is quite a bit off.  Nevertheless, I brought all three of these images into Zerene Stacker and then stacked them using PMax.  The following is the result, which also includes some post processing to make the shot a bit more interesting.

As you can see, most of the stink bug is now in focus.  The entire post processing for this photo, including the following, took only a few minutes.

1. 1) Stack the photos using Zerene Stacker.
2. 2) Exposure and slight contrast change in Lightroom.
3. 3) Tonal contrast (to insect only) using Nik Color Efex in Photoshop CS5.
4. 4) Removed dust spots.

This shot would not have been possible to take otherwise – there is simply too much depth of field (the original shots were all taken at f11).

One other small point to note is you can see at the very bottom of the shot that there is a part that looks slightly different.  This effect is an unfortunate side effect that occurs when Zerene Stacker aligns the photos.  To combat this issue you need to try to take the shots as aligned as possible.  Also, make sure that no important visual elements are on the edges.  Usually, I just crop this part out but if I feel it is important I will just use content aware fill in CS5 – which does a good job with these.

Of course, it can still be tricky to get several workable shots that can then be combined with Zerene Stacker.  One must pay particular attention to the parts of the insect in the shot.  As one moves in closer or farther to focus on a nearer or further part of the insect, very often part of the insect will leave the frame.  The trick is to still keep the same parts of the insect in the frame while changing the area of focus.

This technique is even more important at higher magnifications.  Due to diffraction at high magnifications, if you need a very high quality shot you will need to stop down quite a bit.  On a 5D2, the MP-E 65 does show diffraction at 5x at f11.  This can be noticed on an 8×10 shot, though not enough to overly detract from the shot.  If one needs to crop the shot though or create larger prints, then the lens will need to be stopped down to f5.6.  At this aperture, the DOF is miniscule and focus stacking is a necessity.

For these reasons, I believe Zerene Stacker is an essential tool for any serious insect photographer.

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This shot was taken a few months ago by the ponds outside my office.  I spent some time photographing one stink bug and when I found another on a different leaf – I figured – why not?

They stayed together for about thirty seconds – but this was long enough to get a decent shot.  They didn’t seem too offended by one another – but soon went their separate ways.

Stink bugs are one of my favorite insects to photograph as they are so colorful.

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Still, it was a welcome sight to find some aphids in the wild this weekend while shooting near some ponds that are next to the building where I work.

This one in particular is very colorful, although I am not 100% sure it is an aphid.  It almost looks like a little lobster!  Unfortunately I could not find a good identity for it in my literature or online.  I suspect that it does not venture into our gardens very often and therefore to the vast majority of people is uninteresting.  If anyone has an idea about this one I would be very appreciative.

On future outings I think I will take a guide to Northwest plant life.  Many insects reside/feed on specific types of plants and if I know the type of plant then I may have a better idea about the type of the critter.  Of course, plant identification isn’t easy but I do have a book that covers the native plants in this area fairly well.

Just as I was packing up, I found this one on my camera bag.

This one is much more similar to the standard garden aphids.  I have heard that only the females have wings, in which case that would make this a female.

Well, according to my kids this entry is now over as they want to play a game on the computer so…

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Although aphids stay rather still for most shots, they are not one of the easier insects to photograph.  For one, they are extremely small and often require a magnification of 5x for a good shot.  This means that the viewfinder is extremely dark and the lens is shaky.  The also do move, so tracking can be slightly tricky at times.

Here is an aphid family portrait.

Amazingly, an adult ladybug can eat up to sixty of these a day!  I am currently looking for some lady bugs, as Nelya prefers that the aphids stay away from her roses, but I won’t let her use insecticides on them.

While they certainly aren’t a beneficial insect, they do provide some amusement!

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I had hoped to catch a bee in flight, but alas the only shots I got were too OOF.  I could have probably made my life easier by not trying to get the shot at 1:1, but then it wouldn’t have looked as interesting!  From past experience, I have found it’s better to try to take an amazing shot and fail than to take several mediocre shots.

Of course, I did want to come back with something for my efforts so I did take a number of shots of bees on the flowers.

I photographed in three different locations that day.

1) In my front yard (shortly before mowing) where bees were frequenting a number of flowers in the yard.

2) At Bellevue Botanical Gardens

3) In a bush by my house, where tons of bees were flying.

Interestingly, the third location was where I had the best luck getting shots, though I only had a few minutes to shoot there because we had guests over.

Interestingly, all four bees in this blog are of different species.  I also saw several other species whose photos I was not able to get.  I think I will have to spend some time reading up on bees in the near future, as admittedly I know very little about them.

The following are some tips I made use of.

1) As always, I highly recommend the use of a flash.  For some situations, I did meter for the ambient light but kept the flash for fill.

2) Don’t jump from place to place.  Find a small area that bees seem to frequent and wait for a bee to come to you.

3) While foraging, bees don’t seem to mind me.  I don’t think I would want to get too close to their nest, but while pollinating flowers they could really care less if you get close to photograph.

4) Pick your flowers carefully.  Make sure when a bee does come to you, that it is on a flower that is easy to photograph and that provides a good view.  You can do this by staying near a group of flowers that you know will provide this.

5) Longer focal lengths work better here.

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First, I am not a myrmecologist and my knowledge of ants and carpenter ants comes from reading several books and observing them in my backyard.  Therefore, some of the information below may be incorrect.  If you know some of it to be false, please let me know and I will gladly correct it.

To be honest, I’m not sure if all of them were queens, all were males, or if there was a mix, but I suspect the latter.  Their clearly were smaller winged ants and larger ones.  I watched and photographed the phenomenon for a good hour.  While in my opinion none of the shots are great on their own, altogether the tell a very interesting story.

In the picture above, you can see a number of the winged ants (can’t say for sure whether they are queens or males) at the base of the landscaping timbers preparing to leave.  Most of them (or in the case of the males – all of them) will die within the next several days.  Of the queens, only a couple will likely make it – if that.

Here are some more shots of the crowd waiting to take their chances.

One interesting thing that I noticed in the shots, is that some of them appear to be eating something just before leaving.  I am not sure of this, but it certainly does appear to be the case.  In this shot, it looks like the ant is eating something.

 In the following shot, it looks like it is finishing.  At least, whatever it has there is less of it.

Finally, in this shot it looks like it has finished.

  I’m not entirely sure what the case is here.  Perhaps they are eating a meal provided by the nest before their long journey?

Of course, all of these vital elements of the nests future are not left unguarded.  Among the new kings and queens are a number of soldier ants.

  The queens would line up on the landscaping timbers, and then make their final jump from their nest.  Some of them succeeded in taking off and flying a good distance (sometimes into my face), while the wings of others were clearly not ready yet.  A number of them landed on a plant in front of the nest.  They would take flying leaps and land on one of the leaves, then climb on to the leaf, travel to the very end, and take another leap from the top.

You can tell that the effort was exhausting for them, as many of them were still weak.

After climbing to on top of the leaf, they next would make their way to the very end.

Once at the end of the leaf, each of them would open its wings and make its leap of faith.  Some of them would fall to the ground or a different leaf below, while others would finally succeed at flying.

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First, if you are using autofocus at all when shooting macro, turn it off.  In macro, when you change the focus using the focus ring, you are actually changing the magnification.  Generally, you care what the magnification is on a given shot. The camera, on the other hand, has no idea. Therefore, do not let the camera do this for you.  Set the magnification yourself (most macro lenses have it printed on the barrel) and focus by moving towards and away from the subject.

As you increase in magnification, focus becomes even trickier.  With lenses like the MP-E 65 at high magnifications such as 3x-5x, focusing is incredibly challenging.  When shooting subjects like flowers, typically the camera is on a tripod and if you have Live View you can use the zoom feature to verify focus.  However, when shooting handheld – particularly subjects like insects that are on the move – it is much more challenging.

One trick that I use very often is obtaining focus at a smaller magnification, then increasing magnification to the desired level.  This will only work for subjects that are either stationary or easily trackable.  For very quick subjects like bees, you will need to preset your desired magnification.

I always start farther away rather than close in.  I try to place the lens just beyond the point where it will be in focus, then slowly move in.  One goal, of course, is to not whack the subject with the lens.

When focusing on your subject, there are two things you must always keep in mind.

1) The angle of the subject to the lens.  This will determine what is in focus, and what is not.  This is particularly important as you will not be able to determine the focus for the entire subject if it is moving or may leave any moment.  Instead, you should learn what is possible with each aperture at different magnifications and approach your subject accordingly. 

2) When determining focus in the viewfinder, look at only the most important part of your subject.  When focusing on insects, I look only at the eyes.  I do not pay attention to the rest of the insect, as I already know what will be in focus and out of focus based on the angle of the insect to the camera.  Once I know I have the eyes in focus, I will take the shot.

For insects, the eyes are incredibly important.  With rare exceptions, if the eyes lack focus the shot is lost.

In terms of triggering the shutter, I find it very much like my old rifle target shooting days.  Learning how to consistently get shots in focus takes a great deal of practice, but the following are some tips that may help.

1) Holding the camera steady is huge. Pay particular attention to where your elbows are.  Try to hold your elbow against part of your body.  When sitting, I rest my elbow on my knee.  When standing I try to rest it against my chest if possible.  Standing is by far more difficult than sitting.  Very often when standing, holding the camera steady is a function of getting the right stance while holding the camera with both hands.  I cannot really describe it, but practice definitely helps.

2) When you take the shot, hold your breath.  This will prevent some camera shake, which often is the culprit for missed shots.

3) Do not take a single shot of any subject. Take a number of shots at each angle.  I often take twenty to thirty shots of a single subject if I can, though most of my subjects do not allow me anywhere near that number.  Very often, I find that a number of shots are still out of focus, but if I get a number of frames off there usually is a good in focus one in the bunch.

4) Use a high shutter speed or flash.  If the frame is sufficiently dark, you can use flash to stop the subject and a lower shutter speed.  I will cover this in a bit more depth in a later post, as I have found that there are negatives with using the lower shutter speed.  However, the important thing is to stop the subject, which must use either a high shutter speed and/or a flash.

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While waiting near a fern where I had noticed some fly activity, a small bug caught my eye.  I decided to photograph it to see what it was and was quite surprised with the result.

What was this tiny thing that was aiming its pincers at me!?  It was obviously not a scorpion, as it lacked the stinger at the end.  However, otherwise it did share a striking similarity.

When I returned home I looked it up and was surprised to find out that it is a pseudoscorpion.  Pseudoscorpions, like scorpions and spiders, are arachnids.  In fact, pseudoscorpions also spin silk – but they do not use the silk for capturing prey.  Instead, they spin silk to build small ‘huts’ that they use for mating and for waiting out cold weather according to Wikipedia.

I was aware of pseudoscorpions but always thought that they only live in more arid climates like the Southwest.  In fact, they do live in the Pacific Northwest but they’re so small that few of us every notice them.  I was actually sitting next to it for some time before I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.  It just goes to show that often the most interesting things can be found when you sit still and pay attention to what is around you.

These little guys are actually quite beneficial.  They eat clothes moths and book lice and so aren’t bad to have in the home.  Within their claws they have poison glands they use to kill their prey, so despite their size they are fierce little buggers.

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It took me awhile to find anything truly interesting.  I dug around in the soil for a bit but gave up on that as I was more in the mood of catching something on a leaf.  While there are quite a few interesting creatures that live in the soil, due to the background it can be difficult to get the artistic edge in shots.

After about 45 minutes of searching through bushes, I found an interesting one between two small ponds.  There I found what at first looked like white midges flying around.  I have plenty of midge shots but decided to take some shots anyway and I am very pleased with the shot above.  I always fear when I get an insect in a good location that it will take off before I get a chance but this one stayed for a number of frames.  Of the frames I think I like the one above the best.

The following is a better look at the midge itself.

Of course, I am not absolutely sure that this is a midge.  I could not find it in any of my books but other than the coloring it looks similar to midges I have seen around my house.

All in all it turned out to be a successful day!

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One of the interesting things about keeping a blog is it has caused me to ask questions that I normally would not ask.  The following came up with another similar specimen that I found over the weekend.

After looking at these pictures, I had the following questions.

1. Why did I find this beetle just now?  They are not common during other parts of the year.  Are they common during just a small part of the year?
2. This specimen looks a bit different than the other one.  It is slightly reddish while the other one is more pitch black.
3. It also did not raise its tail as a threat, but instead ran away quickly.  There were also several of them instead of just a single one as I found before.  It certainly seemed more docile than the other one.

I’m not sure if I have a perfect answer for these questions, but I did a little bit of research and have some ideas.

My suspicions are that this is a different species of rove beetle from the one I found earlier.  The characteristics of it just seem a bit too different.

In some respects, I am a bit upset at myself for not getting some more shots of it.  They were very determined to get away from me and there were so many interesting things to shoot that day that I just let it have its way and moved on to other subjects.  Now that I suspect that it is a different beetle it would have been nice to have some better shots.

I looked in my books and found an interesting beetle called Nodobius cephalus.  My book (Insects their Natural History and Diversity) calles them “flexible hunters that seek bark beetle prey under bark and in their galleries”.

As I found these beetles under a bag of gravel, it certainly is a possibility.  Of course, this book only covers eastern insects so I’m not sure if it is common on the west coast.  More likely, it is a different species as one can see from this page full of different rove beetles.  Interestingly, I went through the slide show and noticed that they are all from New England, so it is likely that this one isn’t in the list.

Still, I learned something today and find it interesting how this blog has caused me to ask questions I would have otherwise never thought about.

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