Photographing Soil Additives

[Michael Erlewine]

This could be interesting to a few of us. I recently photographed some 50 types of soil nutrients and additives for a geologist who lives near us and is helping farmers and gardeners with working with these soil additives and organic farming. We have been ourselves working with Hugel (Hugelkulture) and I built eight raised beds this year, of which six of them are operational.

Anyway, I took photos like this example, where I shot a test stack using Nikon’s built-in stacking method, and then counted exactly how many frames it took to go from the front of the saucer to the rear. In that way, everything in the soil additive is clearly in focus, and the rest is in bokeh or whatever turns up.

These photos replaced photos this geologist has that are more like lab specimens and Petri dish looks.

If you want to see a whole lot of them, they are here on my daily blog:

https://www.facebook.com/MichaelErlewine/posts/pfbid07cm4x6ySGXxaoVy899aDMGNVK83CvMa4qGdSGBdosNuiaNpmSoPxCjLt7DQsG8iYl

[Fons Baerken]

Interesting!

[ChengZhou Hong]

Sweet! And I'm sure your acquaintance must have enjoyed those ultra-res copies for his own personal delectation. 

I hadn't realised that Nikon has a built-in focus stacking feature. Learn something new everyday.. it seems to be a function included in the D850 and newer?

[Michael Erlewine]

I did focus stacking for many years before a version of it appeared in Nikon cameras. Still do for many lenses.

[ChengZhou Hong]

Hm, upon some further internet searching, it does seem that this featured was offered on some other models (D800) with a different name.
Only certain cameras have the necessary computing chops for it, I guess.