Forest in a Flower - a photo on Flickriver

Forest in a Flower

This is a cross-view 3D image – a photographic niche I dabble in and it can be a very fun things to explore if you just cross your eyes! It’s also one of the “rabbit holes” I’ll be going down in my upcoming book: www.kickstarter.com/projects/donkom/macro-photography

If you’re unfamiliar with seeing 3D images by crossing your eyes, it’s simple: cross your eyes until you see three images – the center one is an overlap of the left and right and when you get a perfect overlap your vision will “lock on” and you can freely wander around the image. For those with a VR headset like Google Cardboard, a stereoscope or if you can view them “magic eye” style, here’s a side-by-side/parallel view version: donkom.ca/stereo/PDKP2236.jpg

There are some important challenges to consider when taking an image like this. When your eyes can freely navigate around a 3D image, your expect much of the scene to be sharp, with the depth of field extending to all parts of the subject. On a macro scale, this means incredibly small apertures, so small that you encounter diffraction that begins to limit the overall resolution. This image was shot with a special 3D macro lens with two lenses in the same barrel, so both images are taken at the same time with the same sensor – half the frame for the left eye, half the frame for the right eye.

This in-camera 3D effect can be seen by crossing your eyes and looking at the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Since light “flips” when it refracts to be upside down, our cameras always flip the image back around, meaning that the left-eye image is on the right side, and vice versa – allowing for cross-view to work right away so you can test the “depth” that the image possesses. This is important, because composing a stereoscopic image is not just a horizontal and vertical affair – the best images are designed around how much depth the scene or subject will have and it can be hard to fully realize it with two-dimensional thinking.

Still, shooting the two images at once, at this scale, requires a lot of light. Since this is a flower fluorescing under ultraviolet light, the requirements are immense. In the best case scenario, you need an overwhelming amount of UV light to make certain flowers glow. In this instance I used four of my custom-modified UV flashes at point-blank range, full power… with the camera set to a 30-second exposure in complete darkness while I manually triggered the flashes as soon as they would beep saying they were fully recycled. This allowed for a lower ISO of 400, shot on the Lumix S1R.

The front petals falls a little out of focus – any more softness and it would be a distraction. The same can be said for the stamens at the back, and focus stacking for stereo 3D is problematic to say the least – that sweet spot has to be found! For more crazy antics into obscure areas of macro photography, including all the general basics and masterclasses from snowflakes to water droplet refractions, pledge for a copy of my upcoming macro photography book on Kickstarter, now over 300% funded!: www.kickstarter.com/projects/donkom/macro-photography/

Taken on: June 17, 2019

Tags:

stereoview

crossview

macro

deWijs

stereoscopy

stereoscopic

medlar

flower

blossom

floral

fluorescence

fluorescing

fluorescent

glowing

UVIVF

ultraviolet

science

physics

lumix

lumixstories

S1R

LumixS1R

nature

natural

pollen

stamens

purple « less

Groups appears in: • Stereophotography • Ontario (except: Toronto, Hamilton or Ottawa) more » • Wildflowers • Pollen Swapping • Ontario: Yours to Discover • Garden Flowers • PHOTOGRAPHERS OF CANADA • Tips from the Top Floor Podcast (tfttf) • 3-D CrossView Stereo Photos • Beautiful Ontario • UltraViolet • Canada Nature & Wildlife • The World Up-Close (Nature Macro) • Science! • DIYPhotography • 3D Stereoscopic Creations, Art, Manipulations & Games • HIDDEN WORLD. • TWiP • SLR Macro Photography • Best Of Stereoscopy • Simcoe Country, Ontario • CANADA >>> 1 Million Canadian Photos (56,062 Photos) • Photofocus • I am Canadian! • ***Flickr Global • DPExperience • Natur und Umwelt • The Nature Photography • Fluorescence • 3D Stereoscopic Macro Photography • Not a Jack o'Lantern • Panasonic Lumix S1 & S1r « less

Stats: 11,676 views / 8 comments