Canon Macro Bellows

  

 

  

 

  

 

Bellows Macro Flower

 

 I was privileged to receive a Canon Macro Bellows FL from Barb Lawton/ Frank Bumbartore of our photo club, The Schenectady Photographic Society.  This brings Macro to whole new level over simple extension tubes!  You can control the degree of magnification by the bellows length as well as control the aperture of the Canon FD 50mm lens I use.  Also, a live viewfinder LCD really makes this project so much easier than trying to judge composition and sharpness through a view finder.  This was shot with a Canon EOS-M.  I use a LCD light-box on a small Gorilla Pod tripod to light the flowers.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

The Best Camera

As one professional photographer has said, "the best camera is the one that you have with you". Today I took a brief walk at lunchtime and in the building next to our office building was this liberally-no pun intended-decorated Toyota Echo. Because I had my iPhone with me, it was a very easy grab shot. I used camera plus, but edited the image Snapseed. Nothing but fun.

Enjoy, Jeff

JIM

JIM

I met Jim today in Washington Park.  Nice fellow who shared a bit of his life with me.  He used to be an Import Automobile Mechanic, now unemployed.  He collects returnable plastics, bottles and cans to help supplement his income. I think he has had a hard life, but nevertheless, he remained cheerful discussing his past.   Shot with a Nikon D200, ISO 500, F4 with a Nikkor 18-105 lens.  Original in color and processed with Topaz Adjust B&W to create the final image.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

The Morning Gift

I love looking into the backyard while having breakfast. This morning I noticed something different.  Three deer resting in the woods right off our yard.

Knowing that they could also see me, I carefully got up and grabbed my Nikon D200 with a Nikkor VR ,  55-200mm zoom. Wanting a narrow zone of focus, I set the ISO to 500, Av 5.6 to allow for a fast shutter.  Very slowly I opened the back sliding door and moved onto the back deck.  They saw me of course, stared and slowly got up.  I fired off about 12 shots and went back inside.  They hung around for about 5 more minutes than casually walked off.  Of the images, I liked this one which can be seen in the original color image without edit.  I thought a black and white development would look nice.  Thus I edited in Topaz B&W Effects 2 using Hi Contrast with some added vignetting and selective dodging and burning.

What a nice morning experience!  Enjoy, Jeff

B&W with the iPhone 5

There are a number of Apps to convert color to striking monochrome images with the iPhone.  I have tried many but always go back to Snapseed to edit this images.  It's B&W conversion tool creates sharp images with lots of control including the use of traditional B&W filters such as Red, Green and Yellow.  Great fun!

Enjoy, Jeff

Oil in Abstraction Continued

Autofoc Assist lamp reflection

 

Oil 3

 

I am becoming obsessed about nailing  down this technique!  I played a round with my setup as shown to the left.. Patterns on the floor, good window light today, pyrex glass dish with water and oil, camera and hoodman. tripod and macro rail.  Initially I saw this annoying orange light in the   left  side and finally realized that it was the AF assist beam reflecting off the surface.  Could not disable it in the menu so I solved that with duct tape over the beam!.  Still have to fiddle with technique to find the right amount of water to keep the details on the glass dish bottom (lines, bubbles and so forth) from coming through.  The old Tamron 90mm 2.5 Macro at 2.5 helps a lot.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

 

setup

 

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 #5

Another fun shot with the Canon EOS M and a wonderful, old Tamron 90mm, 2.5 Macro Lens.  With an EOS M adaptor attaches to a Tamron to Canon FD adapter, the lens works beautifully on the camera.

The F stop was 2.5 to create a very narrow DOF and a blur of flower petal colors.  Focus was manual on just a few points of the flower base and the rest is intentionally left soft.  The image was edited lightly as a Canon Raw file in Canon Digital Photo Professional.  All on a tripod and Macro Focus Rail. A 2 second timer fired the shutter.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

A Simple Portrait

This is Jay, a very soft spoken man I met while on

Antigua last month. I look for people that to me are
different and unique. We had a great chat about life
and our faiths. He is a Rastafarian. A very gentle
faith immersed in nature and monotheism. I used the
iPhone 5 with Camera + to take and edit the image
Enjoy, Jeff

Snow Day

 

 Note the sign!

 

 

 

 

 

 I wanted to capture people in the city on a snowy day.  For this I used my Nikon D200 DSLR with a Nikkor 18-135mm lens,  ISO 400 and Av of 4.5 to get a fast exposure.  Metering was center weighted to reduce the need for exposure compensation due to the predominance of snow/white in the scene.  I used a Kata protective camera bag that allowed me to use all the controls, see the viewfinder and of course keep the lens and camera dry.  In the 3rd photo, the guy was so happy for he found a kid to shovel the sidewalk!  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

Rose and Friend

ROSE AND FRIEND

For this I used a Canon FD Macro 100m lens at F4 with 49mm extension.  This creates a slightly greater than 1:1 enlargement.  I really love the contrast between the deep red rose petals, their size in comparison to the little white flower that came with the bunch.  The red background causes the white flower to pop out and draw your eye.  The white flower was on the same plane as the middle rose petal.  Shot in CRAW, at 1/50 sec, F4, ISO 100, on tripod with 2 second timer to avoid camera shake. Enjoy, Jeff

 

Snow shoe fun

These images were just taken a little while ago when I went snowshoeing in the park behind our house. The sun was setting and the light was absolutely fabulous. I had my camera that is always with me-the iPhone 5 and I used Camera + to take the photographs and edit them entirely in that application. It has become a very powerful, go to editing app as well as camera taking app for me. They have really enhanced it and I would endorse your purchase of it if you don't already have it on your iPhone. 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.

Cardinal

Cardinal

Shot today through our front window near the feeder.  Shot with the Nikon 200 and the 35-105 Nikon lens. Shot in RAW and edited in Photoshop.  Not bad for a window shot!  Enjoy, Jeff

 

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

Window Light

Portrait Lighting, that is what it all about.  There are so many ways to light a portrait.  One of the simplest ways is to use light from a Northern window when it is cloudy outside.  The light is soft and smooth.  Here I positioned Abe, our 7 year old grandson at a 30 degree angle from the window to create a little shadow on the left side of his face.  Of course this was not a studio shot where background is controlled, but far better than unplanned snapshot or with direct flash.  I metered off his face and used AWB on the Canon EOS M with a 22mm lens (35mm focal length in film format).  Enjoy, Jeff

Portrait

Gorilla  with Platinum toning.  Again, I used Topaz Adjust B&W 2.0 to convert this image taken at the Bronx Zoo.  Shot in color with a Canon IS SX40 camera, through glass,  I thought it was a stunning portrait of this magnificent animal.  I always liked the color image, but this effect really grabs me.  I did some 25% dodging in the central part of the face and created a slight vignette to darken the shoulders and background. The most important part of the image is the face, and this technique emphasizes that.  Enjoy, Jeff

 

Topaz Adjust BW Effects 2.0

Saratoga Motion shot with a 

KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA 7D

This is my first color conversion using Topaz Adjust BW conversion software.  It plugs into PS 3 or higher or in to later versions of PS Elements.  It was really a pleasure to use with as typical of Topaz products, endless creative possibilities.  I toned this platinum with a slight vignette.  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

Yosemite

These were shot with the iPhone 5 this week. Apps used for the color images were true HDR. For the monochrome , 645
PRO. A little editing was done in Photowizard, which
Is a great editing Application. Met some great people
out there!!

Yosemite