Hello everyone.
I'm Ferry Bijl from the Netherlands, I am 61 years old, I live in Arnhem near a beautiful National Park where I have worked the previous 15 years. One of my hobbies is nature photography. I am very interested in insects, especially close focus.
As I became unemployed some time ago without hope for a new job I became interested in building a special rig for macrophotography. In close up photography one of the largest problems is the lack of depth of field. Focussing on the eyes of a wasp throws the antennae out of focus etc.; only a slice is in focus. One way to overcome this is a technique called photostacking: place your camera on a rails, focus, take a picture, replace the camera a certain, small distance, focus, take a shot, replace ...etc. You end up with 10 or 50 or 150 pictures with each having a different part of the insect in focus. With the help of special software you finally end up with a photo that is sharp from start to end.
One of the ways to do this is by using a Stackshot rig from
http://www.cognisys-inc.com/home_cogn.php but that would set me back some $750 before I have it here in Holland. So I thought to build it myself. Apart from the hardware there is the problem of controlling the movements of the rig. Of course it is possible to do it by hand but for a real close-up photo it is sometimes necessary to take more than 100 pictures, each maybe only 10 micrometers (sic!) apart from the other; rather tedious to do by hand. A stepper motor and a controlbox would have to do the job.
And that is where I am now: searching for possibilities to do it with Arduino. I have only just started, I have no experience with programming but I like what I have found already.
The way is half the fun!
And that is how I finally arrived on this forum. Looking for info I found Martin on YouTube talking about multimeters and I liked that a lot: supplying me with the needed info but in a way that attracted me from the beginning: a clear voice, (very important for non-english people!) and very sympathetic, open and not afraid to admit being wrong. I like that very much. Thanks Martin.
This has become a rather extensive hello, but that is me.