Welcome to the blog of my website!
The articles I post here are intended to share some of my experiences in micro and macro photography. The main focus is on focus stacking shots with microscope lenses. However, I also work with macro lenses and optics from high-resolution slide film scanners, and this will also be discussed here.
I almost always use automated focus stacking, either on a special device, an optical bench, or with a conventional microscope. I will present the technology used for this and my working method in various individual articles.
In addition, some very modern system cameras are now also capable of internal focus stacking, which can produce more depth of field with a macro lens than a single shot, and I also want to go into this in my articles, as well as providing detailed information about my home-made flash unit holder for macro shots, which also has a large light diffuser.
The first articles will gradually appear here over the course of 2024.
Who am I?
I was born in 1957, live with my lovely wife Rosa and our doggy Bailey in the beautiful Odenwald forest and have been working as a book author for 40 years. In addition, I was editor-in-chief of the magazine "KORALLE" at Natur und Tier - Verlag for almost a quarter of a century and was also a publishing editor during this time, editing book manuscripts of other authors. Since I have retired from this publishing work for reasons of age, my resources are now free for other tasks.
My photographic activities began in the mid-1990s because books at that time contained more and more photos and I also wanted to illustrate my publications. Gradually, over the course of the 2000s, I became more and more interested in close-up and macro photography in the animal world, and when computers finally became more powerful and clever contemporaries developed the focus stacking technique, I was very quickly right in the middle of it. This synthesis of technology and nature can make the most intricate details visible that were previously reserved for an electron microscope, and with natural colors. These completely
new photographic possibilities can build a bridge between macro photography and the electron microscope, and discovering the world of the small in nature in this way is downright addictive.
However, this blog - or rather this whole website - is relatively new territory for me as a book author, and I see the text contributions as a digital counterpart to a printed non-fiction book, so to speak. This digital book doesn't need paper or a printing press, and it doesn't sit on the shelf for years, becoming outdated in terms of content, but can be updated at any time to incorporate new techniques and experiences. I can also upload it in English so that anyone interested can read it in many countries around the world. I still feel emotionally attached to the printed book, but that doesn't prevent me from pursuing other, forward-looking paths in parallel.
However, after more than 30 books in numerous languages and a three-digit total print run, I hadn't really expected to embark on such a digital experiment again. But life is too short not to pull out all the stops.
Have fun reading!