Macro Project

Shot with a Canon EOS-M, Canon Bellows, Canon FD 100mm lens at 1/30 sec, ISO 400, F5.6 and AWB.   Vanguard Alta Vista tripod and back light provided by a hand held LCD light bank. 

Editing in Canon Photo Professional in RAW mode.  I was going for a more abstract look with the opposition of the round stamens and the linear petals.  Sometimes it is better to focus on a part of the scene in front of you rather than trying to get it all in.  Enjoy, Jeff

Oil in Abstraction

Another snowy day project.  I used my Macro set-up as noted a few posts below ( 50mm Canon FD lens, 50mm of extension and the Canon EOS M) with a Canon Speed light 90EX at -2 compensation. ISO 400, f-stop 3.5, shutter 1/125 with flash.  Set up was a pyrex glass dish filled with water, a few drops of vegetable oil, placed on a glass table with a dish of colorful flowers about 18 inches underneath.  Shot on tripod with Macro Focusing Rail with the sensor parallel to the oil droplets.  You have only a few seconds for the shot as the oil disperses quickly.  Shot in RAW and edited in Canon Digital Professional.  Great winter indoors photo project.  Enjoy, Jeff

Small Landscapes

MACRO SETUP

Another perfect day for the Small Landscape. 

 First see the set up above:

Canon EOS M with Live LCD Viewfinder, essential for accurate composition

Fotasy EOS M lens FD and camera adapters

Canon FD 50mm lens

Fotasy Extension tubes 50mm
Macro Slide rail for fine focus
Tripod

LED light Bank. Additional light from french doors and overhead daylight balanced fluorescent ceiling lamp

ISO set at 100 aperture for the top image 1.8, others estimated 2.8-3.5, Tv 1/40-1/30 sec, AWB

Shot in RAW and edited with Canon Digital Photo Professional

My goal as stated in an earlier post is to focus on a key element of the flower and let the rest go soft with a wife f stop.  Composition, design, abstractness are more important to me for this imagery than sharpness and detail from front to back.

Once you have a DSLR, the rest of the set up is quite inexpensive. Old Nikon, Canon 50mm lenses are really cheap on Ebay.  Plain extension tubes and Fotasy adapters are about 15-25 dollars!

So what do you think? Critique always welcome.

Enjoy, Jeff

Winter in Albany

The Onesthaqua creek in South Albany.

 These were shot today in 4 degree ,beautiful sunny weather.  With proper dress and equipment precautions it is quite doable. Re equipment, it is important that you have extra fresh batteries and a sealable bag to put the cold gear in when you want to bring it in the house.  This prevents condensation from cold to warm, which could damage cameras and lenses. These images were shot with a Canon EOS M and it's 18-55 EF lens. Settings were ISO 100, f11, shutter from 1/15 to 1/30th second, AWB and a polarizer.  RAW format and Adobe RGB color space.  Tripod of course.  Lightly edited in Canon Digital Professional software.

Winter Berries

Winter Berries

This was shot today with the EOS M set up, using a 50mm Canon FD lens with A Fotasy FD to EOS   adapter, a Fotodiox extension tube set at 21, ISO 200, F11, and Tv of 1/40 sec.  AWB worked fine.  Here, I reduced the amount of extension to 21 from 49 to allow taking in a larger scene.  I also stopped down the lens in contrast to the Macro abstract flower colors below to show more detail.  RAW was used and lightly edited in Canon DigitalProfessional.  I really like the EOS M for this and landscape work.  The large LCD and touch screen controls make it a very good photo tool.  Enjoy, Jeff

Macro Colors

 This was a fun project!  My goal was to create macro images that were based more on color, design, and  composition rather that exacting detail.  To do this I used a Canon FD manual lens set at 1.8, mounted on a 3 set of Fotodiox Extension tubes equalling 49mm.  This was mounted on my Canon EOS M.  The camera was mounted on a Macro slide focusing device, then on a tripod.  Focus was first achieved with the lens and then fine tuned with the Macro Slide.  DOF is extremely narrow when the lens is this close to the subject ( about an inch) ISO was 800 and shutter at  1/50 sec using soft window light as the primary light source.  Because the tubes cause 3-4 stops of light loss, seeing the image brightly enough on the live view viewfinder required a shutter speed of .5 seconds for set up.  Once I was happy with what I saw, I set the shutter speed to 1/50 to capture the image.

There are many ways to create macro images: extension tubes, macro lenses, close up filters and reversing a lens with an adapter.  The most expensive would be a good prime macro, the least a set of these non-coupled aluminum tubes or the lens reversal ring. This is a great rainy day project!

Enjoy, Jeff

Star Landscape Photography-How to do it

 This is Yosemite Valley view, photographed last week about 730PM.  The tricks to getting good star photography with out star trails are these:

Use a wide angle fast lens 10-30 mm, ideally 2.8 or faster

Use a camera that allows you to shoot at 800 ISO to 3200 ISO with little to no noise

Include the landscape in the scene

Expose at widest aperture and VIP,  prefocus to a distant object manually as light is getting dim, and turn off auto focus to lock the focus. Do not touch the lens after that

Expose for about 10-30 sec, depending on the lens.

To avoid star trails divide the Focal length of the lens into 600 to give you the maximum exposure time to avoid star trails. Example, a 20mm lens allows up to 30 sec exposure.  Bracket times/ISO's to see the best shot.

Use a tripod. Fire the shutter with a cable, wireless or self-timer to avoid camera shake

A tungsten white balance keeps the sky blue
Turn off long exposure noise reduction

In this image, El Capitan is on the left with night climbers and their head lamps.

Camera was a Canon EOS M with a 22mm pancake lens.  ISO 1600, f2, 15 second exposure, fired with 2 sec self timer.

Enjoy, Jeff