Fly Reel

Finally made a lightbox. This is my first project in it. Any critiques appreciated.

Attachment 76810

Darin

really really nice.... both the reel and the shot :)

Looks good. Can you show us the set up? - TF

Looks incredible. Ready for an advertisement. The only thing would be to maybe rotate the reel so the letters werent upside down.

Yep. Nothing to criticize. Perfect as is.

Thanks for the comments.

Old Clickler, I will post up shots of my box. Pretty sad looking but works good and didn't cost me a penny.
After a lot of trial and error with Macro I discovered a solution to get every shot tack sharp, from front to back. I could usually accomplish this by using a smaller fstop (f22) but I would loose detail and need tons of light. The sweet spots of most lenses are f6 to f8. The problem was this is the dof would be super shallow, leaving a picture blurry in the background or foreground. Great for portraits..not for Macro...So here is the solution I found.
The background is obviously a separate shot. The reel, grass, fly and rock are all the same scene in my lightbox. What one might not know is that the scene is 12 pictures merged into one. I started from the front of the picture and worked my way to the back of the picture manually focusing each shot. Here is the info, and a better explanation on how this works.
The software I used was Helicon focus. I posted the link below. Using this software has now taken macro photography to a level higher than I ever expected for me.

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfocus.html

Bretm1, I actually did that on purpose. It made my eye immediately focus on the upside down name to figure out what it said, and I think it makes the brain remember the name. I could be wrong, Its just how my mind works I guess.

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfocus.html

Thanks again
Darin

Oustanding effort.

The light is very even except for the slotted screw on the crank handle, which is a little hot. I'm assuming you Photoshopped two images together to get the background, but it is very seamless. Even looking for it, I can't find any mistakes. Compositionally, I do find myself looking for the rod.

Note: Just read your explanation post. Your hard work paid off.

One more thing. I used Topaz Remask 2 to extraxct the picture and paste it on to the background useing Corel paintshop photo pro x3. This is a plugin for Paintshop and all verstions of CS. It works GREAT.

Darin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Canyon Hiker

The software I used was Helicon focus. I posted the link below. Using this software has now taken macro photography to a level higher than I ever expected for me.

http://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconfocus.html

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Helicon Focus is a pretty neat program. I have used it a little bit in the past with very good results. I couldn't justify the cost of the program at the time so I didn't buy it. I was trilled to see that Photoshop CS4 had this feature built into it. Sadly, I haven't been able to get it to work on my machine. It keeps telling me I don't have enough RAM. :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mjs1973

Helicon Focus is a pretty neat program. I have used it a little bit in the past with very good results. I couldn't justify the cost of the program at the time so I didn't buy it. I was trilled to see that Photoshop CS4 had this feature built into it. Sadly, I haven't been able to get it to work on my machine. It keeps telling me I don't have enough RAM. :(

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That's a bummer. I just upgraded my PC to AMD with 4 processors and 8 gigs of RAM. What a difference it makes. I was able to offset the price of plugins by buying Corel paintshop ($79.00) rather than CS4. By doing this I was able to buy many plug-in programs, one of them being Helicon and the other Topaz. I have used CS4 and I have to say, there really is not much difference between Corel and CS4, just the price. The plugins that work with CS4 will also work with Corel.

Darin

Well looks like you nailed it in one. Maybe you can do more for the company and they can give you free reels. Super DoF and composition. :)