Macro Fun

A while back I bought a 58mm filter thread reversing ring that will attach two lenses together: filter threads to filter threads. The reversed lens acts like a magnifying glass.

A few weekends ago, I got to playing around in the backyard with our bumper crop of Amaryllis. First, here's the rig:



Now, a photo from that setup:



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The above photo is roughly a 50% crop of the original. This shows you how narrow the DOF is, even with the main lens stopped down to f/8. I shot this hand-held (used ISO 800). I wanted to get a shot of these tiny, fast-moving bugs crawling on the Amaryllis. So I sat on the ground, braced my elbows against my legs, and gently rocked to bring the focus in and out. When I saw a bug in the viewfinder, I "chased" the bug with the point of focus and fired on burst mode. (I didn't use the flash for these bugs-on-the-move photos)



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The above is a non-cropped shot of the flower's anther. For this shot, the camera was mounted on a tripod and MLU was engaged. I also used an off-camera flash and a white reflector underneath the flower for fill-in light (the main light was the sun coming from an angle behind the flower). I swapped the old 55mm lens with a Canon 50mm f/1.4. I also added a Tamron 1.4x teleconverter. I focused on the front fibers of the anther and waited for one of the bugs to crawl past.



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This heavily cropped shot is of a very small ant ("sugar" ant, or some type of ant slightly smaller than a typical fireant). I found this guy deceased and placed him on a white sheet of paper. The light is from a single florescent blub placed at close range (custom WB done on the paper). This shot was done inside my house (too much wind outside!) with the camera on a tripod and MLU engaged. I again used the Canon 50mm reversed (instead of the old 55mm lens) with the 1.4x teleconverter AND added 68mm worth of extension tubes. The great part about shooting static subjects indoors is that it allows you to use very long shutter speeds (i.e. you don't need great amounts of light). I set the ISO on 200, used a small aperture, and let the shutter speeds be what they needed to be (several seconds).



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The shot of the fly was done with my "normal" macro set up: extension tubes and a Canon 70-200 f/4L. This shot was made handheld (these bugs don't stay in one place for very long) and I used the off-camera flash. The funny thing was seeing the fly jump at every flash. When it popped, the fly would jump up and then land almost in the same spot as it was before the flash.