Getting Ready for Spring

With the temperature reaching the heady height of 10.5C yesterday I spent a little time tidying up in the garden and Bobby managed to sprawl out on the grass for an hour or so. At the same time I was on the lookout for things to practice my macro photography.

On checking the fruit cage I could see buds on the blackcurrant bushes were showing signs of life. Actual size about 8mm. 25 photos stacked using CombineZP.



Also showing were lots of buds on my large Leylandii tree.
Actual bud size about 7mm. 12 photos stacked using CombineZP.



By the end of the day we were back to gloomy wet weather and it was no better this morning on our perambulations. It looks as though we are going to be back to frosty weather soon but it was great to have one day of pleasant weather and to breathe in some fresh air.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Congratulations to the four visitors who made a correct identification of last week's puzzle picture.

  

Gold stars for Keith, Glo, Matron and Wilma who identified it as moss. Like Matron I have plenty of it growing in my lawn. At least the Blackbirds have cleared it out from round the edges.

Now for the new photo - taken through the microscope. I'll tell you now it is not a coconut.
Strong lighting made it appear brighter than it really is.



Clue: When it's grown up it may help keep the doctor away.

No prizes - just for fun.

Friday at the Flicks - Blue Tit Drinking

Just the one video this week. It has been more than a bit on the dull side for much in the way of photography recently. When I first spotted this Blue Tit I wondered whether it had been in a scrap. Then I realised its downy feathers were still fluffed out as it was early morning and it had probably just woken up.



 Sometimes I wish I had a camcorder which could film in very low light levels. As this morning was the first well below freezing for a while there were more Blackbirds milling round the lawn than ever at 7.30 a.m.. I gave up counting at forty. The previous few mornings the numbers had dropped to about a dozen.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Heath Robinson Meets Heather

In general I've been disappointed with the quality of some, many really, of the stacked macro photos I've taken. The main difficulty being changing the focus by minute amounts between shots. Last week I spotted an article on the DIYPhotography web site which explained a system for automatically moving the photographic subject for each shot. I though to myself I could do something like that so I have been in Heath Robinson mode for the past three days and came up with this:



Canon 350D, cheap Chinese bellows, s/h Super Takumar 1:2 55mm lens.
On the piece of wood:
Top
Stripped computer DVD player keeping the stepper motor and laser carrier. (Sprig of Heather mounted in pink Blu Tack) On the right - relay to fire the camera.
Bottom
Breadboard with Arduino Nano (left) pulsing a stepper motor driver (centre) and the camera relay.
On the right the 5V regulated power supply.

This photo of one heather flower is built from 59 stacked photos processed with CombineZP.



As I have the Arduino Nano programmed at the moment it moves the subject one step, waits for vibration to settle, fires the camera, waits one second and then repeats the process. This it does 25 or 50 times depending on the position of one of the switches. If more photos are needed I push the reset button to carry the process on again. On my calculation each step is 0.15mm.

This time I am pleased with the result though it takes CombineZP quite a while to process all the shots - worth the wait though.

LATER:

After thinking about increasing the sharpness of the resulting stacked photo I took a series in RAW. CombineZP doesn't accept RAW so I converted them all to BMP which CombineZP can work with. It was much faster processing the 69 shots in this stack and with a bit of processing in PaintshopPro to add  more contrast this was the result: Full frame with no cropping. I also increased the time from moving the subject to taking the shot to 1.5 seconds to allow vibrations to settle down.



I think I will be satisfied with that, for now.

A Bath Too Far

Spotted this Wood Pigeon a while ago. At first I couldn't work out whether it was soaking wet or had been in a fight.



In the end I decided it was soaking wet. My thought is that it had either been very vigorous  in bathing in the waterfall on the pond or it had fallen in. Looking at it I think it had, as I have often seen, been standing on the raised edge of the pond to drink and lost its balance. Either way it took a couple of days for it to dry out completely.

Missed Photo Opportunity - Rooks Sharing Food

This is something I have read about and now seen with my own eyes for the first time. I often put a slice of bread in one of the fat ball feeders near the bottom of the garden. The Rooks always arrive early in the morning and having the bread to go at keeps them away from the other feeders.

This morning, as usual, they spotted me in the kitchen and flew to a nearby tree. One had a large piece of bread in its beak. Another Rook landed on the same branch and leaned towards the first with wide open beak. After a few attempts at begging it was rewarded. The first Rook gave some of its bread to the second.

They were both adults as would be expected in the Winter. Of course I started up the video camera which is always ready on a short tripod on the work surface near the window but I was spotted and they all flew away. I can but hope that another opportunity arises to film this activity which may be part of the social group bonding or part of the mating ritual as occurs with Robins.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Well, well. I win again. Poor old Bobby was mortified to think that anyone should accuse him of digging up my concrete. lol. Those looking towards our feathered friends were nearly there. The actual culprits - Blackbirds. They dig everywhere looking for anything edible. I have watched them many times pecking into that piece of path and scattering the ballast pebbles all over the place.

  

As always my thanks to those who put forward their thoughts..


This week we are back to a macro photo taken with the 350D through bellows fitted with an old Super Takumar 55mm lens. Twelve shots stacked using CombineZP.


Last week's Friday at the Flicks should give you the answer. No prizes for a correct identification - just for fun.