Setting up Camera

Body

1)      Set Mode Dial to M (Manual) **Make sure the lens set to Manual Focus, and the dial on the top of the camera is set to “M”

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c)      Set Standard picture style

Lens

1)      Set to MF mode (Manual Focus)

2)      Make sure lenses are fully locked

Setup

1)      Attach metal pole from camera stand into tripod groove on camera (safest way to do this is by screwing it into the camera before attaching camera to stand)

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4)      Open Helicon Remote.

Shooting images in Helicon Remote

Camera settings:

1)      The exposure mode should be set to Manual, and greyed out.

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Below this is the Histogram. For specimen photography, this is not the most useful. It can be used to see the effect of the polarizing filter on the heavy peaks in the white zone (the right hand side).

Specimen Setup:

All images should have a scale bar. The color bar is optional, but including it is very useful during post-processing. Background should be black velvet, brown velvet or white cardstock. Specimens should be well lit, with no opaque shadows and no ‘hot spots’ of overexposed areas. If this is not possible, err on the side of too dark, as you can always lighten an image but you cannot restore detail where overexposure has obscured it.

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4)      Once you are happy with the focal plane, click the B button. A lock will appear.        

At this point, you may NO LONGER TOUCH THE LENS.

Changing the focus after one of the focus brackets has been set will result in out of focus images.

5)      Click anywhere in the live view window to see the whole image again.

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