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Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

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Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#21

Post by tristor »

hermitcrab wrote: post #7

Macro photography is a fascinating hobby, revealing a whole new world under your nose. And you don't have to go any further than your garden or local park to go on safari. It requires a bit of kit: -digital camera (I use a Nikon D7000) -macro lens (I use a Laowa 100mm). A standard lens won't be able to focus close enough. -flash (I use a Godox). You need a decent flash to get enough light for a sharp photo. Ambient l…

I used to have a macro lens, and while I quite enjoyed it, I found that since I primarily do wildlife photography I could use a longer focal length telephoto lens at distance to get nearly as much detail by filling the frame with the subject. I have quite a few butterfly photos that were taken with a 300mm or 400mm telephoto prime, not a macro lens, and you'd be hard pressed to know the difference.

That's not true of /all/ macro photography, it depends on the specific details of the subject you're most interested in capturing. Without a macro lens you aren't going to capture the subtle textures of a butterflies wing, but you can certainly get a good photo of the entire butterfly including the textures of its eyes without a macro lens.

That said, I love doing proper macro photography. It does require a bit more kit though, you really need a ring light or a dual-flash, and a tripod and focus rail to support doing focus stacking to get extremely detailed shots. Agreed though with your sibling comment that manual focus is fine. There's really no reason to worry about refocusing on a subject once you get initial critical focus, it makes more sense to move the camera/yourself (which is the way a focus rail works).

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#23

Post by tristor »

jl6 wrote: post #2

My, that was a yummy slime mold! > "You take multiple pictures, sometimes over 100 and it takes tiny little slivers of focus, and then you put all those into software, and that creates your final image." Is this a workaround to let us see “what it would look like”, or are there optical reasons why this produces an image that is inherently artificial, and could never really be perceived that way?

When you take macro photos with close focus, your depth of field is like a very thin slice of the scene, you can think of it of having a plane of just a millimeter or so deep that you are scanning through the subject, taking a frame each time. So if your subject is something like a monarch butterfly which is generally around 30mm in length of body and close to 55mm considering both wings and body, you might need to take 60-70 frames then focus stack them afterwards to get critical focus on all parts of the subject.

I'm not sure what folks use now, but Zerene Stacker ( https://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker ) was the gold standard when I was doing serious macro photography about ten years ago.

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#24

Post by roughly »

hermitcrab wrote: post #7

Macro photography is a fascinating hobby, revealing a whole new world under your nose. And you don't have to go any further than your garden or local park to go on safari. It requires a bit of kit: -digital camera (I use a Nikon D7000) -macro lens (I use a Laowa 100mm). A standard lens won't be able to focus close enough. -flash (I use a Godox). You need a decent flash to get enough light for a sharp photo. Ambient l…

I picked up a binocular microscope a bit back and it’s one of my favorite nerd purchases - it’s 20x, which is enough to be interesting, but not enough to require a lot of sample prep, and the binocular setup gives you depth perception, so it feels like you’re “there” with whatever you’re looking at. I’ve mucked around with microscopes in the past, but the binocular is genuinely just fun.

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#25

Post by CheeseFromLidl »

tristramb wrote: post #10

Many years ago (or so it seems now), I was turned on to slime moulds by the photos of Kim Fleming on Flickr ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/myriorama/albums/1271006/ ). The undersides of logs can be a good place to find them.

I’ve occasionally found them, but only when their color contrasts with the background during walks. Can they be found year round? Do they have a preference for logs?

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#26

Post by khr »

hermitcrab wrote: post #13
pbronez wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you leverage focus stacking on a mobile camera? I poked around a bit for relevant apps but didn’t see anything credible.

Can any mobile cameras focus close enough to be useful for macro? Maybe you can buy a third party add-on lens?

You can, depending on your definition of "useful". You can buy a cheap laser pointer, take out its lens, and put it over your camera lens. Tape it onto the lens for a temporary janky version or make a 3d-printed mount for something much better that you can easily take on/off.

I've personally found this little hack useful, but then again I don't have a DSLR and macro lens!

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#27

Post by DonHopkins »

One of my favorite Facebook groups is "Slime Mold Identification & Appreciation", which has some spectacularly talented and prolific professional slime mold photographers posting to it. Including Barry Webb, the subject of this article, who is an "all star contributor" and posts frequently.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1510123272580859

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1510123272580859/user/100041...

And then there's this guy:

Harvesting, cooking and eating Dog Vomit Slime Mold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfbLSl_4o78

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#28

Post by EvanAnderson »

hermitcrab wrote: post #9
JR1427 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't even need a macro lens. I used a kit zoom lens and some lens spacers, bought used for £60. (I did my post-doc on slime mould decision-making)

Yes, you can use spacers. That is probably a good way to get started. I believe you can even use kits to put a standard lens on 'back to font'. I prefer a dedicated macro lens personally. Lenses like the Laowa 100mm for Nikon are fairly decent and not _that_ expensive (note it is manual focus - in macro you generally move the camera rather than changing the lens focus).

Just to echo what you said:

The "reversing ring" trick does work, (mounting a lens backwards) but the ergonomics are shit. I bought one to play with and tossed it in a drawer after only using it once. A real macro lens is so much better.

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#29

Post by pixl97 »

Zababa wrote: post #5
jl6 wrote: post #2

My, that was a yummy slime mold! > "You take multiple pictures, sometimes over 100 and it takes tiny little slivers of focus, and then you put all those into software, and that creates your final image." Is this a workaround to let us see “what it would look like”, or are there optical reasons why this produces an image that is inherently artificial, and could never really be perceived that way?

>Is this a workaround to let us see “what it would look like”, or are there optical reasons why this produces an image that is inherently artificial, and could never really be perceived that way? Both in a way. When you look at a landscape, your eyes and brain are constantly adjusting everything so what you look at "directly" is sharp, and you don't really realize most of what is in your field of view is low resoluti…

>and you don't really realize most of what is in your field of view is low resolution, maybe a bit blurry

PBS did a great video on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4&t=514s

This links to the section in question, but it's well worth watching all of it to see and example of how your brain tricks you. The computer doing eye tracking and blurring everything else out to the user really points out how much your brain lies to you about reality.

Re: Photographing the hidden world of slime mould

#30

Post by pixl97 »

dinkblam wrote: post #22
analog31 wrote: post #16

I realize that that these photos are for looking at but it irks me when there is never a size scale.

it irks me more that they are super tiny low resolution. where are the originals?

https://www.barrywebbimages.co.uk/Images/Macro/Slime-Moulds-...
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