I was out in my back yard the other day scouting for bugs to shoot when I ran across a hawk feather. Days earlier I heard a hawk being very vocal. I was not sure if it was injured or if it was being threatened in some way. Perhaps this feather came from some encounter. I took the feather into my studio and set it up to shoot a macro panorama. You’ve seen some of my panorama posts. I posted a panorama of the Austin Skyline and a Milky Way panorama. I have also posted numerous macro images including an image of a begonia at 3x magnification.
This image leverages both photography techniques into one. First, I took 14 separate focus stack sets of between 6 and 12 images each (a total of 131 images). Second, I stacked those sets into 14 individual images. Third, I assembled all 14 individual images into one panorama image using special software. The original resolution of this image is 26,000 x 7,500 pixels and the total image size is 2.73Gb. The resolution is amazing. Unfortunately, I can’t show it here because it’s just too big. So, you get to see this 1,500 x 450 pixel image instead.
This image was taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark III using my Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 Macro lens set on manual mode with the aperture set on f/8, the shutter at 1/20th of a second and the ISO at 100. This image was captured in my studio using my light box with 3 LED lights. Two lights were reflected off the walls while the other was directly lighting the subject. I used Helicon Remote to capture the images, Helicon Focus to assemble each of the 14 focus stacked images and Panorama Maker to complete the panorama image. BTW, I could not get Photoshop nor Lightroom to assemble the panorama and it took me quite a few tries with Panorama Maker to get things to line up properly…
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© 2015 T. Kahler Photography
