Macros, Because You Know You Love Them.

I'll start with admitting this wasn't entirely an original idea, although I can't for the life of me remember who I got this from. I do like the results and I'm putting it on the "to explore" list.

I don't think this needs to much explanation, I included a pullback! Yeah, don't expect it too often. I like a little mystery to my work.

50mm, ƒ/11, 1/250sec and ISO 100. OCF camera right @ 1/8 power.


Pullback with same settings:

Focus on Manual Focus

So in the past few days I've been playing with the thought of exclusively using manual focus for a while. So out come the macros! Yeah, portraiture might be a nudge more difficult using fly-by-wire manual focus. I'll definitely have to practice that. That said, though, I'll have to practice that anyway, seeing as my addition will be fully manual.

Naturally some samples of my plays:


and



That last one was hand held at 1/40sec. Kudos to Olympus for getting it right with in-camera image stabilization!

365/173 Food/3

Much better today. So grapes were my victim today!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.8, 1/80sec and ISO 800.


50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ4.0, 1/60sec and ISO 800.

365/170 Bugs/7

Much better, so to make up for yesterday, I'm posting a bunch! Settings were variable, but needless to say, i shot at a smaller aperture, between ƒ5.6 and ƒ/8, high shutter speed and a high ISO.

365/169 Bugs/6

Not as good today, but what can I say, I did this on 3 hours of sleep and a rough day.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 800.

365/168 Bugs/5

Bees are really hard to photograph when you're afraid to be stung, so today you'll get a heavily cropped semi-macro. If it's nice out tomorrow, I'll try again, hopefully getting a little closer this time. It's not horrible, but I'd have loved to have captured more detail. Oh yeah, I shouldn't have to mention that when photographing these creatures, high shutter speed is crucial. To capture them mid flight though, you'll need flash to freeze the wings.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/640sec and ISO 400.

365/167 Bugs/4

I was going to use the story I wrote on ILP, but it's nearly bed time, so I'll share that later.

365/166 Bugs/3

Ants are cannibals, well, they eat other ants. These small ants were eating a much larger specimen of their species, chopping it up into smaller pieces and taking it down into their nest. If you weren't itching before, you will definitely start now.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/125sec and ISO 1250.

365/165 Bugs/2

This is just too much fun. I'm also amazed how much information I can still extract from the Raw files, because these are pretty small crops of the original picture. I think this is where the sharpness of the lens really helps! And I can't imagine how difficult this has to be on Full Frame cameras where the DOF is so minuscule at wider apertures that you can't even get a leg of the flies in focus, so the only way to counter that is lowering shutter speed and increasing ISO and aperture. I like my shutter speed high for these though, just because even camera shake will throw off focus, not to mention these critters are fast!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/4.0, 1/200sec and ISO 800.

365/164 Bugs/1

I love this theme already! It's macro on steroids, especially as small as I'm going! I think I want to save for a longer macro lens to photograph these small creatures better.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0 @ ƒ/2.8, 1/400sec and ISO 800.

365/162 Light/6

I'm adding my second shot from yesterday onto today's. No technical details on these, because I think they would just spoil the beauty.

Yesterday:


Today:

365/161 Light/5

Two shots today. One of Kiddo, of course, and the other one I found by accident. Nothing extra technical was done here, except the kid is a B&W conversion and the other shot shows my weakness: macro.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm ƒ/2.0, 1/160sec and ISO 800.


50mm ƒ/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 800.

365/147 Second Shot!

How many people own a lens with this focal length and aperture? I bet it's the majority of photographers, and if they don't own one now, they have at one point.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/4.0, 1/250sec and ISO 400. Flash @ +1 EV, bounced off the ceiling.

365/144 Black and White/2

Some macros from a recently opened Iris, in B&W.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/200sec and ISO 400.


50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.8, 1/100sec and ISO 800.

365/138 Accidental Letters/3

Nature makes some really nice letters! Maybe it could be a side challenge of sorts to find every letter of the alphabet in nature.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/250sec and ISO 100.
I

V

W

Random Macro

Just because macro week is over, doesn't mean I throw in the towel! Dandelions make great macro subjects and the Zuiko Digital 50mm f/2.0 makes a wonderful macro lens, heck even if it was just for the ridiculous sharpness! Anyway, enough rambling:



A crop of the middle of the photo, very sharp! This is a straight 500x500 pixel crop of the original Raw file.

365/121 Macro/7

It's been said before, but I'll seriously miss the Macro theme! I love to get this close to things without being called uncreative for "yet another head shot".  Yellow is the color of today!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/4000 and ISO 100.


50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/320sec and IS0 100.


It's a good thing my E-3 has shutter speeds up to 1/8000sec, or I might have run out of headroom! The E-500 only goes up to 1/4000 and it would have cut it really close here.

365/120 Macro/6

This barely qualifies as macro because if you really tried, a regular lens could probably capture this uncropped. Regardless of the "macro" qualities, I still found it fascinating, and it'll keep people wondering for hours.

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/80sec and ISO 800.

365/119 Macro/5

I was in the mood for coffee, and then I looked at the spoon sticking out of the cup and wondered what it would look like immersed in bokeh. Well, here it is, in it's bokeh-ful glory!

Lens and camera settings:
50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/100sec and ISO 100.


I believe I just heard the noise of a myth shattering! It's a sweet sound!

365/118 Macro/4

Everyone knows how hard it is to focus in the world of the small, especially when you're doing a head-on shot at a large aperture, but here's where LiveView is really handy. I set it to 7x zoom, which seems to give the best compromise between really close zoom and still having a clue what you're looking at.

I took this shot at pretty much the closest distance the lens would still focus, and I walked into the world of non-existant Depth Of Field. In LiveView at 5x or closer, you can see the DOF, and breathing wrong would knock the picture out of focus. At viewable image sizes, it probably wouldn't matter much, because Unsharp Mask would make short work of any tiny little bit of unsharpness this would cause. I wanted this photo cropped at 50% however (I wanted to get a little closer, I need an extension tube, badly), so tight focus is top priority.

Focus looks to be bang on. I made sure to mount my camera on a tripod and turned on mirror lock and the self timer.

Lens and camera settings:

50mm f/2.0 @ f/2.0, 1/200sec and ISO 100.