Week 21 - MAy 26, 2013
Wet Rose Macro - Reversed lens technique
Macro Madness!
Followers of this Project 52 may note that for the last several weeks now, I've been posting lots of macro shots. I fear I've contracted "macro madness! I've been trying several techniques and have had the best success with a technique in which a reversing ring is screwed onto the front filter threads of a lens. As it has the proper bayonet mount at the other end, it allows the lens to be reverse-mounted on the camera. The result is that the lens now allows very close focusing - aka macro shots of the subject.
This week the reversing ring came which allows my old 50mm Pentax f.2 prime lens to be mounted on my Canon 50D camera. The lens is the original from my old Pentax ME Super 35mm film camera and has a aperture ring on the barrel so that even reversed, I can manually stop down the lens. Of course it gets quite dark in the viewfinder when I do this. So, I set the camera on a tripod, reverse-mount the lens, put my subject on a table, and then slide the subject forward and back to get focus. (The reverse-mounting trick eliminates electronic focus and for that matter, all communicaton between camera and lens, so no auto-focus, no auto aperture, and even the lens focus ring does little. Moving the subject or the camera is the only way to a.)
That having been done, (with the camera in manual mode), I carefully stop down the lens to gain more depth-of-field. This close, depth of field is minimal at best and so you usually want to get every bit you can. The meter still works though, so you can also adjust your shutter speed and thus the tuning of the "holy trinity" - ISO, f/stop, and shutter speed, lets you dial in the proper exposure. Using the live view on the camera helps a lot too.
This shot was set up at ISO 125, 2.5-seconds @ f/22. The ISO was set as low as possible to minimize noise, the f/stop set to gain maximum depth of field, and the shutter speed was fine to be long as all was locked down on a tripod indoors with no wind. The other advantage of the long shutter is it allowed me to do a little "light-painting" with a small flashlight to fill in shadows and highlight the water
Followers of this Project 52 may note that for the last several weeks now, I've been posting lots of macro shots. I fear I've contracted "macro madness! I've been trying several techniques and have had the best success with a technique in which a reversing ring is screwed onto the front filter threads of a lens. As it has the proper bayonet mount at the other end, it allows the lens to be reverse-mounted on the camera. The result is that the lens now allows very close focusing - aka macro shots of the subject.
This week the reversing ring came which allows my old 50mm Pentax f.2 prime lens to be mounted on my Canon 50D camera. The lens is the original from my old Pentax ME Super 35mm film camera and has a aperture ring on the barrel so that even reversed, I can manually stop down the lens. Of course it gets quite dark in the viewfinder when I do this. So, I set the camera on a tripod, reverse-mount the lens, put my subject on a table, and then slide the subject forward and back to get focus. (The reverse-mounting trick eliminates electronic focus and for that matter, all communicaton between camera and lens, so no auto-focus, no auto aperture, and even the lens focus ring does little. Moving the subject or the camera is the only way to a.)
That having been done, (with the camera in manual mode), I carefully stop down the lens to gain more depth-of-field. This close, depth of field is minimal at best and so you usually want to get every bit you can. The meter still works though, so you can also adjust your shutter speed and thus the tuning of the "holy trinity" - ISO, f/stop, and shutter speed, lets you dial in the proper exposure. Using the live view on the camera helps a lot too.
This shot was set up at ISO 125, 2.5-seconds @ f/22. The ISO was set as low as possible to minimize noise, the f/stop set to gain maximum depth of field, and the shutter speed was fine to be long as all was locked down on a tripod indoors with no wind. The other advantage of the long shutter is it allowed me to do a little "light-painting" with a small flashlight to fill in shadows and highlight the water
drops. So that, and some work in Adobe Lightroom 4 and voila! - One Wet Rose Macro!Read more about this technique here -
Technical Specs
Camera - Canon 50D
Lens - Pentax 50mm f/2.0 prime
Exposure - ISO 125, 2.5 sec. @ f/22
Shot as - Raw
Edited with - Adobe Lightroom 4
Lens - Pentax 50mm f/2.0 prime
Exposure - ISO 125, 2.5 sec. @ f/22
Shot as - Raw
Edited with - Adobe Lightroom 4