Playing with equipment

Some months ago I purchased a "macro/wide lens" from a seller on EBay. A true Macro lens costs hundreds of dollars but this combo set of lenses cost me a huge $45. I haven't used them much because I had a loan of a Canon D40 that was fitted with a true (expensive) macro lens. I have had to give that back to the owner so my cheapie set has been brought out of moth-balls!

This is what I am talking about. The macro/wide lens is in two parts and can be used together or individually. I used the wide lens last week on interior shots for a holiday resort. It did the trick! Of course there is a fair bit of lens correction to be done to remove the fish-eye effect of a wide angle lens. Today I was trying out the macro and I will show you later what I mean by "lens correction".
To begin with I tried the macro (the picture above left) on its own on text.

Then I removed it and moved the camera further away so that I could take the same text without the lens - I positioned the lens as close as I could focus, which was quite a long way further away from the page.

As you can see, I have indicated the coverage with the macro lens - and you can see from the two photos of the camera, the distances from the page. I used one of the children's rulers to show the relative distances.
From text I moved on to flowers. I selected some carnations out of the bunch.

On the left, no macro and as close as I could go to focus on the centre flower of the three. The picture on the right is with the macro and on wide angle - 17mm with the camera as close as I could focus. - very similar distances to those pictures of the text.
From that same distance I zoomed in to 55mm and here is the result.

Because aperture used has a huge effect on the depth of field I had selected f/14 and let the camera decide the Speed. for all the photographs Manual focus was used and the wireless remote was also used for every shot. I wanted to avoid any camera movement that may be cause by me pressing the button.
Then I put the "wide" part of the lens onto the macro lens and from a distance of35mm to the nearest flower, this is what I captured.

The picture on the left is as it was taken - the lens is so wide that the edges of the housing are included in the shot. In Photoshop Elements I used Lens Correction to remove the barrel distortion, then cropped the image which resulted in a very natural looking photograph of a bunch of carnations (actually they are "pinks" which is a cousin of the carnation!)
If you want to see the pictures larger, click on the first of the pictures and you will be able to view each of the pictures by either clicking on the pictures at the bottom of the screen or by using your arrow keys.
My goodness! I do ramble!
AJ

Ring light

Today I opened another Ebay purchase - a Ring Flash for a macro lens. I had always thought these specialised lights to be very expensive so when I was able to purchase one for $62 including postage I jumped at the chance! The camera with macro lens has been promised to me so I felt that this item would be invaluable as a companion to it.

Opening the package was a surprise, the quality of the goods looked to be robust and well constructed. There also seemed to be a lot of things in the box!
Taking out the ring light I found six different sized adapter rings to fit almost any sized macro lens.

The camera I was to fit this light onto is a Canon D40 and has a 58mm lens.

The adapter ring is flat, as you can see, with a raised ring screw that fits neatly inside the lens ridge. The ring flash then slips onto this ring.

The controls for the light fit onto the top of the camera in the hot shoe - but the connection is NOT a hot connection.

There are two inputs on the control, one is for the lead to the light (as shown) and the other is for a power connection that is also included - along with a conversion adapter for Australian power sockets.
I installed two Alkaline AA batteries and switched on . . . .

Don't ask me why I was surprised that it actually worked - but I was! Hence the photograph!
Next thing to do was to find a few things to try it out on so here are three examples.

I had printed this train timetable from a web site so the print is not brilliant - but is as was printed - the reason I chose a paper with type on it was to see how even the lighting was from the ring light (not a flash, it is on all the time the switch is in the "on" position).
Since I actually need this light to help a friend put together some good macro photos for a book he is writing I chose a rock as one of my subjects.

Now I could see yet another advantage to the ring lighting - hardly any shadows! I have not done any clever Photoshop work on any of these photos - just adjusted the levels and added a little sharpening.
Last photo needs no explanation but gives an idea of the distance I was from my subjects shown above.

This is a Twenty Cent piece 28mm diametre. The picture has not been cropped.
This light is going to be fun to use!
AJ

Playing with the Canon macro

Wanting to use the camera and without a car to go some place other than home, I had to content myself with searching for subjects in the garden. Selecting the Canon D40 and the Macro lens as my "weapon of choice" for this venture I started by setting up a table with a white cloth as a backdrop - with an ingenious method of creating a back support with a surfboard strapped to the back two legs! I should have taken a photo of my "studio"!
To begin with I thought that I would try to take plants in isolation from their surrounds by draping white material over the surf board and over the table. I found a piece of florist's "oasis" foam to support the plants. Once the stem had been pushed into the foam the extra white material that fell down the front of the table was doubled back and gently positioned over the oasis block. This acted as a reflector. So the plant was in front of a white draping backdrop and its underside was brightened with reflected light off the white fabric over the block.
Rather than use the macro lens as close as I could to the subjects I needed to find out how much depth of field I would get if I were further away. (I need to know this for a future project). Here are a couple of my white backdrop results.

 Red Salvia         f/8  1/160     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

Plumbago    f/8  1/250    ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

 The camera would have been about 700mm from the subjects (for all the photos included here today) I still need to learn a bit more about the Canon camera - I could not remember how to lock the aperture! I was using Manual focus but the camera was in Aperture priority.

Since only one of my roses is flowering and there are only two roses on the bush, I did not want to pick the flowers so clambered onto the raised flower bed with my tripod and camera to get these next two shots.

  f/11    1/500     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

f/11      1/320     ISO200    100mm (fixed focal length)

 I really love orange roses! This one is called "Just Joey" and another orange one that I have taken photos of is "Whiskey".

The macro lens does an excellent job of isolating a single subject and my experimentation showed me that I can get a bigger depth of field by moving further away from the subject. Strangely though, in the viewfinder I cannot tell that the background is so out of focus. It looks almost as sharp as the main subject.

All my photos today were taken outside (Its almost winter and the temperature is a warm 27 degrees!) in the sunshine. All the experts tell you that no one should take photos any time except during the "golden hours" of early morning and late afternoon. In the tropics the golden hour is a mere ten minutes long so that is too restrictive for me!!! I love the full sun, shadows make subjects more interesting. I guess shooting in the midday is why I shall never be considered an expert!

AJ

Fun with Macro

A friend of mine has given me his Canon 40D and f/2.8 Macro lens to play with while he is away touring Australia. This morning - before the thunder claps and rain arrived - it was sunny and worthy of going outside with a camera. With this golden opportunity I decided first to take a few shots with the dedicated macro lens and then take similar shots with the Nikon with the screw-on macro adapter lens I had bought (new) from Ebay.
Here are the first two shots of a tiny grasshopper I spotted on one of the early Chrysanthemums. The head of the flower is only two centimetres across which will give you an idea of the magnification/closeness of me to the creature and petals. First the Canon 40D

 and now the Nikon D90

The depth of field is actually better with the dedicated macro lens on the Canon but I am really amazed at how well the sub $50 adapter behaves. The adapter is in two halves and when I unscrew the wide angle lens I can get up really close - to about 15cm from my subject.
Here are a couple more photos for comparison - the ones taken with the camera were when the light was a bit brighter - the thunder had already started rumbling by the time I took the Nikon outside. The loud bangs and the torrential rain came as soon as I moved indoors! We have had 29 mm of rain since it started ten minutes ago!
First the Canon

The colours are true in this picture from the Canon. The Nikon has tended to pinks.

The colours may need adjusting but see how much closer I can get once I take off that wide extension? Mind you, the depth of field is really really narrow! This flower is only tiny - about 1.5cm across. Because of the fading light I moved the plant outside.
All my photos are taken in full manual (with a few trial runs to get the settings correct!) The pre-sets did not seem to suit either the macro lens on the Canon nor the supplementary lenses on the Nikon. Focus is on manual too.
I enjoy playing with cameras (you would never know it, would you?) so being given permission to use someone else's camera and expensive lens is like going to heaven!
Just to finish, here are two more shots I want to share with you.

Both these flowers are small - the partly open Chrysanthemum is only 2cm at the most. It wasn't until I peered through the camera lens that I could see there were ants crawling around inside it.

If you click on any of these photos, they should open into a larger image, to return to this blog to finish reading or look at other pictures, click the "back" button.
Apologies for not writing in my blog for a while. I have not had good Internet connection due to switching ISPs but hopefully all that is behind me!
AJ