{"id":7691,"date":"2022-11-12T17:06:47","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T17:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7691"},"modified":"2022-11-12T17:06:47","modified_gmt":"2022-11-12T17:06:47","slug":"macro-photography-with-an-otoscope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/?p=7691","title":{"rendered":"Macro photography with an otoscope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I sometimes try out outlandish and unusual techniques with my photography: mostly they fail but I learn from the experience. Here I describe using a cheap otoscope (a device for looking in the ear) as a macro \/ close-up camera looking at flowers. This is one that failed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The technique that I used is fixing the otoscope to a focussing stage on a tripod and taking a number of photos at slightly different distances. The otoscope has its own lighting around the camera lens to illuminate the subject. These photos are then combined in Photoshop using a technique call focus stacking. This is to get a final image that has sharpness from the front to back of the subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, here is the set-up:<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The tip of the otoscope focussing on the stigma<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
\"\"
A side view of the the tip of the otoscope focussing on the stigma<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A general view showing the otoscope, focussing stage and flowers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Now for some results with a Christmas Cactus flower as the subject:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A final, sharpened image made from 47 images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A comparison between a single image and the stacked version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Made from 15 photos, this shows the stigma<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
This is the flower of a Viola. 35 photos made this photo!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The base images produced by the otoscope were photographically very poor but it works fine for its intended purpose. As I said, this was an outlandish experiment but I have learnt from the exercise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I sometimes try out outlandish and unusual techniques with my photography: mostly they fail but I learn from the experience. Here I describe using a cheap otoscope (a device for looking in the ear) as a macro \/ close-up camera looking at flowers. This is one that failed! The technique that I used is fixing … Continue reading “Macro photography with an otoscope”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,86,22,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-close-up","category-flowers","category-focus-stacking","category-macro","category-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7691"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7700,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7691\/revisions\/7700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pmstudios.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}