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Archive 2022 · Dikes

Peter Figen
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Dikes

First shot with new Rodagon Digaron Macro lens, used on a Novoflex bellows.

ViceGrip Diagonal Cutting Pliers

Edited on Jun 25, 2022 at 12:44 PM · View previous versions

Jun 21, 2022 at 04:29 PM

cwebster
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Dikes

Wow! Sharp, detail, gray tones... Just wow!

Jun 24, 2022 at 11:06 PM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Dikes

cwebster wrote:
Wow! Sharp, detail, gray tones... Just wow!

Coming from you that means something. I kinda splurged on this lens, a sort of you only live once purchase, and it's one of the best lenses I've ever seen - that crazy Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 Digaron Macro FLOAT with the manually set floating element. You print out a chart for your sensor/film size and put it in the shot to determine the reproduction ratio and then set the floating element ring accordingly. A stunningly beautiful lens.

Jun 25, 2022 at 12:28 AM

JimKasson
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Dikes

Very nice. Was there a lot of retouching involved? The Rodie 105 mm f/5.6 with the floating element(s) that you set according to magnification?

Jim

Jun 25, 2022 at 09:34 AM

JimKasson
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Dikes

Peter Figen wrote:
Coming from you that means something. I kinda splurged on this lens, a sort of you only live once purchase, and it's one of the best lenses I've ever seen - that crazy Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 Digaron Macro FLOAT with the manually set floating element. You print out a chart for your sensor/film size and put it in the shot to determine the reproduction ratio and then set the floating element ring accordingly. A stunningly beautiful lens.

I think it's a great lens. I get as good results with my set of Schneider Makro-Symmar 120 mm industrial lenses, but this is much more convenient, so the SK lenses gather dust.

Jun 25, 2022 at 09:38 AM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Dikes

JimKasson wrote:
Very nice. Was there a lot of retouching involved? The Rodie 105 mm f/5.6 with the floating element(s) that you set according to magnification?

Jim

Pretty much everything I do has a ton of retouching involved, this included. No matter how much you clean off objects you're going to photograph much closer than you'd normally look at them, there are defects in manufacturing that I'm not interested in, dirt and dust that, normally invisible, becomes a huge distraction from whatever story you're trying to tell, and then to accentuate or de-accentuate the lighting to further tell the story you want to tell. And then there's the cleaning up of the areas that Helicon can't quite get right, which are usually from areas when part of the focussed image is blocked by the blooming of something that was in focus earlier in the stack and is now larger and blurry later in the stack.

While this was only just over 60 images, and it went together pretty well in one pass, I'm working on a different angle of the same pliers with 250 images and had to stack it in sections and then re-stack those subsections manually in Ps, as both Helicon and Zerene created ghost images no matter what. That one will have more post in it. These are really photo-illustrations I think. I'm not too worried about the "purity" of the photographic process, only about realizing whatever my original idea for the image might have been while being open to it changing along the way.

Jun 25, 2022 at 11:52 AM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Dikes

JimKasson wrote:
I think it's a great lens. I get as good results with my set of Schneider Makro-Symmar 120 mm industrial lenses, but this is much more convenient, so the SK lenses gather dust.

It's a fabulous lens, I agree, but I have others that are more appropriate for traveling.

Jun 25, 2022 at 11:54 AM

JimKasson
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Dikes

Peter Figen wrote:
And then there's the cleaning up of the areas that Helicon can't quite get right, which are usually from areas when part of the focussed image is blocked by the blooming of something that was in focus earlier in the stack and is now larger and blurry later in the stack.

Are you moving the object, the lens, the camera/lens assembly, or just the focal plane? I have the Cambo accessory to let the Cognisys stepper motor move the focal plane, but I haven't tried it yet. I think I'll lose calibration.

Jun 25, 2022 at 12:54 PM

bman212121
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Dikes

Lovely image Peter! The only thing that comes to mind is your photo is much more valuable than the object being photographed!

Jun 25, 2022 at 12:58 PM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Dikes

bman212121 wrote:
Lovely image Peter! The only thing that comes to mind is your photo is much more valuable than the object being photographed!

That is not lost on me. I agree.

Jun 25, 2022 at 01:01 PM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Dikes

JimKasson wrote:
Are you moving the object, the lens, the camera/lens assembly, or just the focal plane? I have the Cambo accessory to let the Cognisys stepper motor move the focal plane, but I haven't tried it yet. I think I'll lose calibration.

Having done many dozens of these stacks in the last fifteen years or so, I've found it's always better to leave the lens stationary and, in this case, focus with the rear standard. There are issues with doing that sometimes but far fewer than the changes in perspective caused by moving the lens in relation to the object being photographed. I've never felt the need for any motorization of the focus because it's so easy to just turn the knob in between frames, and I'm trying to keep the process as simple as it can be, and sometimes it's not simple enough as it is.

Jun 25, 2022 at 01:08 PM

Karl Witt
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Dikes

Wonderful image Peter. Unique lighting to cast the tones light to dark. I that nice depth dimension feel to it. I always think of these as one-shot shots, I have never stacked images

Something to learn another day for me

Karl

Jun 26, 2022 at 02:36 PM

Peter Figen
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Dikes

Karl Witt wrote:
Wonderful image Peter. Unique lighting to cast the tones light to dark. I that nice depth dimension feel to it. I always think of these as one-shot shots, I have never stacked images

Something to learn another day for me

Karl

Thanks Karl. You could shoot this in one shot but it would be a different image as the depth of field is so shallow at f/5.6. Not better or worse, just different. In fact, I've got a few images that I started out as focus stacks but liked it so much when just the front tip of the subject was in focus with everything else going out of focus, that I stopped right there. And then the opposite has been true as well, where I thought I'd make a very selective focus image and it just morphed into a full focus stack. There's no right or wrong way, just they way you choose at the moment, but I will say that in some cases, the choice to have everything in focus complicates the hell out of what you're doing and adds hours and hours to the post production. Since I so rarely get paid to do these types of images any more they are more a labor of love or stupidity, more often a mixture of both.

Jun 26, 2022 at 04:58 PM


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