14 replies to this topic

[Mathiacus]

I got one. Much joy! Got it for less than the price of a pack of smokes. Now i need to learn how to focus stack..

[dspdrew]

Helicon Focus. This program is like magic.

[Foogoo]

Helicon Focus. This program is like magic.

That looks like an awesome program. I was just thinking the other day how great my microscope is but how terrible the field of focus is.

[dspdrew]

Yup. Most my microscope pictures are about 12 or so images stacked.

[Foogoo]

Yup. Most my microscope pictures are about 12 or so images stacked.

I'm going to give it a try tonight. Does is correct for movement well? Since my focusing knob is built into the microscope tube, it's literally impossible to refocus without moving the microscope slightly.

[Jonathan21700]

Really cool program! Thanks for sharing!

Edited by Jonathan21700, April 1 2015 - 12:05 PM.

[BugFinder]

what do you guys mean when you're talking about image stacks?  What is that?

[kellakk]

 

I'm going to give it a try tonight.

 

Post pictures when you do! I'm curious how good the results are with the USB microscope you have.  If the pictures turn out well I'll probably be picking up one of those myself.

 

 

what do you guys mean when you're talking about image stacks?  What is that?

 

 

It's where you take multiple pictures of the same subject at different focus distances, then merge them into one to get a photo that's in focus across the whole subject instead of just one part.  Very useful for macro photography.

Edited by kellakk, April 1 2015 - 3:52 PM.

[dspdrew]

Helicon Focus automatically moves the images around, rotates them, and zooms them to get them all to match up. You have to play around with the settings. By default it has a low limit on how much it corrects these things, so you might have to increase it quite a bit.

[BugFinder]

That sounds great.  Does it work with most hardware or do you have to have a particular type of USB microcope?  I have a celeron.

[dspdrew]

It does all its adjustments digitally on the computer. It doesn't actually control any hardware. It's funny because that was exactly how I thought it worked too when I first heard about the concept. At least as far as taking the pictures at the different focus depths.

 

For me, it's a bit of a pain, because I have to change the focus of the scope back to its original position between each picture, because my camera wants to try to automatically focus each time. Once it's focused on the original focal position of the scope, I change the focus of the scope a little farther than the last picture and take the next. It's a bit of a skill I got down pretty good. For people with a mounted camera with a permanent focus, like a USB microscope, it's simple.

[Foogoo]

I gave the program a quick try and couldn't get good results, but probably because I didn't really bother to look into the settings and my pictures were quite shifted. For a $30 800x microscope though, it's pretty great for the price. Here's one of the pictures of a Dorymyrmex queen. You can see how everything out of the plane of focus is, well, unfocused.

[dspdrew]

Yeah, I think you might be doing something wrong. What happens if it isn't allowed to adjust the picture as much as it needs (due to settings), you end up with stacked pictures that aren't lined up. I never was able to really figure out exactly what the down side is to allowing it to move, rotate, or zoom the pictures a greater distance.

[dspdrew]

This here is a picture I made along with the four separate stacked images.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stacked image

 

[Foogoo]

FYI there's also Zerene Stacker which was referenced in a page to build an insect imager. I might give that a try as well.