This clip, as well as stock footage, is available in 4k resolution. Make sure you watch it on a large screen! You won't be able to appreciate this clip or see individual cells moving in a sponge on a smartphone. If you have a full-HD screen, when you enter full-screen mode, please press on "view actual size" next to the HD icon to improve sharpness.
To make this little clip I took 150000 shots. Why so many? Because macro photography involves shallow depth of field. To extend it, I used focus stacking. Each frame of the video is actually a stack that consists of 3-12 shots where in-focus areas are merged. Just the intro and last scene are regular real-time footage. One frame required about 10 minutes of processing time (raw conversion + stacking). Unfortunately, the success rate was very low due to copious technical challenges and I spent almost 9 long months just to learn how to make these kinds of videos and understand how to work with these delicate creatures.
I am glad that I abandoned the idea of making this clip in 3D (with two cameras) - very few people have 3D screens and it doubles processing time.
Gear:
- Canon 7D (died at the beginning of the project as I had overused it in my research), Canon 5d Mkiii (90% of footage is done with it)
- Canon MP-E 65 mm lens
- adjustable custom-spectrum lamps (3 different models)
- several motorized stages including StackShot for focus stacking
- multiple computers to process thousands of 22+ Mpx raw images and perform focus stacking (an old laptop died on that mission after 3 weeks of continuous processing).
Edited in Sony Vegas, Adobe Photoshop CS6, Zerene Stacker, and Helicon Focus.
Music: Atmostra III by Cedric Baravaglio, Jonathan Ochmann and Zdravko Djordjevic.
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