Photophys.com: The Science of Photography

When the magnification is greater than 1X, the depth-of-field (DoF) becomes paper thin; and 3D objects cannot be imaged very well.  For subjects that are completely still, one can take a series of photos with different focus setting and then attempt to combine them.  By this I mean the construction of a composite image by using the sharp parts of the component images.  If you have tried this, you know that there are problems.  First of all, our camera lenses are not telecentric, and the magnification changes with the focus setting.  Therefore, the first step is to resize the images before trying to bring them into register.  With more than a couple of images, this gets to be a lot of work.

As you probably know, there are computer programs for image reconstruction and DoF expansion.  One review of such programs can be found at:  http://www.crystalcanyons.net/pages/TechNotes/3DMicroMacro.shtm

Here Prof. Hart compares various programs and concludes that the freeware program CombineZX does rather well.  Information about Combine ZM can be found at:

http://www.hadleyweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/CZM/Manual/combinezm_help.htm

 
A couple of weeks ago I downloaded CombineZN and finally got around to testing it.  I have only used the automatic mode, but I am impressed.  Here I show a few images to serve as an illustration.  The shots were taken with a Sigma 150mm lens at close to 1:1 focus (1X magnification) with 68mm of extension tubes added to bring the magnification to 1.68.  In all cases I used f/5.6.  I took seven shots with a change in focus the same direction each time.  These are photos of a fly about 2mm in length that has been trapped by a Cape Sundew plant.  In the first image (148 kb, jpg)  I attempted to focus on the closer eye, and the problem with DoF is obvious.  The second image (209 kb, jpg) was constructed by CombineZM from a stack of seven jpg images.  This image was satisfactory from the start, but I did improve a few places with the clone tool.  I have a lot more to learn about CombineZX, but I thought that you might enjoy playing with it also.

By the way, the plant is small.  This photo (228 kb, jpg) puts it all into context.