My macro journey

[CT_Shooter]

I had been walking up and down this flower bed for a while. I got a couple OK shots of a few things, but nothing to speak of. I was about to give up and move on when I spotted this little guy with his tail curled around the center of the flower. I got excited, as it immediately looked like a great opportunity. I was a little afraid he would spook before I could nail the shot. Fortunately, he was cooperative enough for me to get a whole series, trying a couple combinations of composition. Closer up and further away. This is the one that worked the best IMO. Heck I even tried a B&W version. It was OK, but lacked the punch of the color.

It's a great photograph, CH; technically and artistically. The concentric circles of a plant and an animal is almost poetic because of the framing and the focus. The B&W is interesting, but I prefer the full color version, too. Thanks again.

[BrokenolMarine]

I love your pics my friend. I could see this as one of those large format coffee table books. The colors and composition are stunning. A small blurb at the bottom of each about the focus of the pic. Be it plant or insect... and you'd have a book. It would sell in the area I used to work in outside of Richmond.

[clovishound]

Well, I've reached that point where I have to be careful about my expectations for an outing. I went out again this morning. The weather was cooler than it has been, but still very humid. I went straight to the wildflower field and started shooting. There wasn't nearly as much dew, which was a little disappointing. I'm seeing some new to me critters, but mostly the same as I have shot several times before. I got some good shots, but nothing exciting, like I have gotten the last few times. Part of that is I have higher standards, part is I already have some similar shots of some species, and some is just dumb luck.

I did try my hand at handheld focus stacking. This is where you take a number of images focusing on different portions of the subject and then merge them all after the fact using Photoshop, or other software. This helps overcome the problem of narrow depth of field, where only a thin slice of the picture is in focus. When shooting as close up as I am, this is a constant problem.

Here is just a single photo of the series where I have focused on the eyes. This is what you do when not focus stacking, as the eyes nearly always need to be sharp for a decent looking image. Note that only the eyes, front legs and a small portion of the thorax are in focus. I was using a very small aperture to increase depth of field as much as I could in camera.

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And here is the focus stacked version. Note the entire dragonfly is in focus. Something nearly impossible to do from this angle with normal camera equipment.

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And here are a couple more I shot this morning.

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And I'll show you one of my failures. This looked very interesting. I really like the head on view of this unusual looking insect. No idea what it is. The issue is that the black on black color of the body makes it lose nearly all detail. No fix for this but different lighting and background. Nothing I know of that I could have done in the field, short of picking the plant and moving it to another location, which I can't do at the park, and would have undoubtedly resulted in the insects flying off.

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[markiver54]

, yet more extraordinary pictures!

[clovishound]

Finally gave in and bought the new macro lens I've been lusting after for a long time, the Nikon Z 105mm F2.8 micro.

I braved the heat and went over to Cypress Gardens and tried it out. Very smooth operation. I tried out the autofocus, and it seems very good, although I only used manual focus for actual pictures. I really like the control ring near the base of the lens. It can be programed for many different operational controls. I've got mine set for aperture control. I am a fan of that. Reminds me of the old film camera lenses with the Fstop ring. Resolution seems very good, although not terribly different from the old ailing 105 lens. Hard to be absolutely sure about resolution until I take it out a few more times, and shoot some from a tripod.


This one probably shows the resolution the best. Those are individual pollen grains on the wasp. It was shot at around 1:1 and cropped very little.

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Spotted this jumping spider making a meal of a spittlebug. Love to get the "action" shots.

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Here's another spider having lunch. Too bad lunch was out of focus.

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Grasshopper.

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[CT_Shooter]

Awesome! Very glad you have this new 105mm F2.8 micro lens. Thanks for sharing your photographic "journey" and your exquisite photos with us. Love it.

[markiver54]

Awesome! Very glad you have this new 105mm F2.8 micro lens. Thanks for sharing your photographic "journey" and your exquisite photos with us. Love it.

Ditto Clovis!!

[clovishound]

Here's a close up of that first wasp photo that gives you an idea of what can be revealed in this image when enlarged.

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[CT_Shooter]

Holy Cow!!!

[Ernie]

Wow for me too. Now I am wondering how that eye works.