I tried for many hours to capture this:

“…[C]onsciousness flowed through and around her and into the darkness. She glimpsed the place dimly before her mind blanked itself away from the terror. Without knowing why, her whole being trembled at what she had seen—a region where a wind blew and sparks glared, where rings of light expanded and contracted, where rows of tumescent white shapes flowed over and under and around the lights, driven by darkness and a wind out of nowhere.”^

I don’t think I got there, and I will try again, but I was really excited when this appeared in the viewfinder, and I sort of knew that this—or one of its fraternal siblings—was the one, even though it didn’t quite make it.

Similarly, I read the quote a few nights ago, and knew that my current macro subject—the Collier Kaleidoscope—had the … Read More »

if I could paint like this, I’d… well, I’d just… I mean I’d…

but I can’t, so I use a camera instead.

Fairly heavy on the post today, James… But I like it, so groovy. I didn’t leave Aperture, but I did pull out some of it’s hidden manipulation features… still nothing you couldn’t do in a darkroom, I don’t think, but far more than I usually do. But, like I said, it matters not.

I have a feeling that this would fairly well represent Paul-Muad’Dib’s becoming the Kwisatz Haderach, but I haven’t gotten to that part yet, so it doesn’t.

D7000. Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series, reversed, on 100mm extension. ISO100, 1/5th (AP Mode), f/3.5. Heavily processed in Aperture.

If not for that bit of lens flare in the lower right, this could quite easily be a painting, or even a pastel sketch… Granted, this isn’t straight out of the camera, but it’s not very heavily processed either:

Aperture’s built-in RAW conversion
Exposure +.44
Black Point +2.43
Brightness +.06
Contrast +.12
Definition +.57
Saturation +.04
Vibrancy +.28
and some rather minor adjustments to levels.

So nothing crazy, no outside image editors, no plugins, nothing. Just pure, unadulterated digital macro photography. But peep the delicate handling of the colors, the soft feathering of edges, the texture that seems to lie under everything.

Fun stuff.

And speaking of fun, two things: 1) I’m reading Dune (thanks to 365.126) and thoroughly enjoying both it and the act of just simply sitting and reading fiction, something I haven’t done in quite some time. I’m afraid I’ve lost some patience and focus, what with all the internet usage I’ve been into … Read More »

Tried something again today, or started to try something new, but decided to try again before I tried, if that makes any sense… probably not, huh.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to mount the 30mm Sigma and 10-24mm Nikkor in reverse on the 75-150, but had no luck with either. Well, in a flash of brilliance, I decided to try to mount them on the 36-72 instead.

I mounted the 36-72 on the camera, and held up the 10-24: no go, even holding the aperture wide open. I think the pupil or iris (I don’t know the terms: please correct me) is too small. Even wide open (at f/3.5), the opening is tiny.

So I held the 30mm up and ding! it looked like it would work!

So I gaff-taped the 30 to some extension tube parts, taped its aperture wide open, … Read More »

I’ve been reading up on Macro photography quite a bit lately. Well, that’s not quite true… I’ve been thinking of buying a proper macro lens for several days—the Tokina 100mm f/2.8, specifically—and reading review after review and spec sheet after spec sheet, and in the process I decided to see how the macro rig (the 75-150mm E Series, reversed and extended) and the Super Macro brothers stack up against the real Macros…

So I took a bunch of pictures of a ruler.

*yawn*

And I got some pretty interesting results:

The D7000′s sensor measures 23.6mm by 15.6mm. (For Sanity, we’ll say 24×16. Also, from now on all measurements will be in millimeters unless otherwise noted.)

The macro lens I’m considering produces a 1:1 reproduction at 11″ (~4.5″ from the end of the lens).

Well, the 75-150mm f/3.5 gets close-ish:

Simply reversed, the 75-150 reproduces roughly 36.5 x 24.5 … Read More »

Ever since I picked up a macro reverse ring and a set of extension tubes (this one and these, total cost $15.90), I’ve been wondering about mounting one lens on a second one just to see what would happen. I didn’t see a way to pull it off for quite some time, but then, in a flash of inspiration, I came across a brilliant solution. Unfortunately, this ‘solution’ occurred to me at work, early in the day, and by the time I got home, I’d forgotten. Oh well. I started playing around with the extension tubes and a couple of lenses anyway, when it hit me: Gaff Tape. And so the Super Macro Bros. were born.

Day 1. I mounted the Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series on the D7000, taped an extension tube to it (somewhat haphazardly), and mounted the Nikon … Read More »

Day 3 with the new macro rig, and I decided to go big.

8 exposure HDR big.

This scene looked so flipping dreamy and impossibly dynamic-rangey that I knew a single exposure would do it no justice.

I would really like to see this printed at about four feet wide… (or at least 7.3″ x 11″)

D7000, Nikon 36-72mm (at 72mm) mounted on the Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series (at ~100mm to provide a bit of vignetting that was lost in the HDR conversion) via 14mm extension tube, both at f/3.5, ISO100. Exposure times of 2″, 1″, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30, 1/60, HDRified in Photoshop CS5.1 merge to HDR function, and processed with its Surrealistic preset. (Next purchase: a dedicated HDR program… probably).

I shot this indoors, with multiple lights on, at 4:02pm, 8 March 2012, in Dallas TX. It is completely overcast in Dallas today.

I do not own a telescope.

What I do own is an old, slightly scratched (and rather dusty, apparently) magnifying glass, a Nikon 75-150mm E Series, a Nikon 36-72mm E Series, a set of extension tubes, and some gaff tape.

D7000, Nikon 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series, at 72mm, mounted on a Nikon 75-150mm E Series, at 150mm, both at f/3.5, ISO100, 2.5 seconds.

(full writeup to come tomorrow, if all goes according to plan.)

I had some FUN this afternoon! Whee!

I won’t go into it right now, as I’m a bit pressed for time, but I will do a full write up with lots more pictures later soon. If not later tonight, then probably sometime over the weekend.

But here’s a hint:

D7000, Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series, mounted to the 36-72mm f/3.5 E Series, via 14mm of extension tubes. ISO100, 1/6th (chosen by the camera, as I was in aperture priority mode, and thus why the pins in the upper right are not in focus), f/3.5 (both).

And, by the way, I shot some video with this setup (and have pictures of the setup) that I’ll share soon, so stay tuned!

And this was the most frustrating one yet…

68 shots (all virtually identical, unless you’re me and after something relatively specific) in, I knocked over the cheap old tripod that was holding the snooted SB700 and Cactus V5 trigger onto the fancy tile in the kitchen.

Bye Bye Cactus trigger; Hello D7000 Commander Mode, with all its attendant PITAness.

50-odd shots later, many of them black, and I changed the position of the subject (mostly to prevent the reflection of the D7000′s flash, which was set to fire only a ‘shoot now’ flash, but of course this ‘invisible’ pre-flash shows up in anything even slightly reflective, and I’ve yet to find anything that will block this and still allow it to serve as a trigger, hence the Cactus V5 purchase… but I digress)…

and it took 3 shots in the new position—1 at the … Read More »