Have you ever wondered just what the wings of a cicada look like really close up? There’s a company with a nifty piece of tech that can show you exactly that, and anything else, down to a micron level. Its fascinating computerised rig can be configured to capture the most detailed macro photos you’ve ever seen.
At the Maker Faire 2014 that just wrapped up in San Francisco, Tested got all the details (ha) from GigaMacro, the company that makes the Magnify2.
Using an off-the-shelf Canon EOS 600D and a macro lens (I’m guessing the MP-E 65mm), hooked up to a CNC-esque, 3D-printer-esque contraption, the Magnify2 moves across the X, Y and Z axes snapping photos and building a tiled photo that can be navigated a la Google Maps.
Since there’s no camera on the market that can capture a single gigapixel image, building a huge multi-layered sheet of photos is the only way to get that granular level of detail. Wedding photographers have been using the Brenizer Method to capture high-res photos with thin depth of field for years; this system uses the same basic idea but moves the camera back and forth to capture as much depth info as possible.
[Tested]