Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is especially tough when your subject darts around like a mosquito.

Don’t look too closely at this one… The [whateverthisis] portion of this picture was tortured beyond all reasonable requirements to make it appear, at first glance, to be in focus. Trust me, it’s not, and if you look closely, you can see all the post work I subjected it to.

If you’ve been following the 365, you know this is out of character for me, so I apologize.

Anyway.

I walked out to the landscaping out front of the building that shares a parking lot with mine, and started bug hunting. A large gentleman (I’m 6’2″ and about 250lbs, and this guy had 6″ and 80lbs on me) came out with his dog. I looked up and said “How’s it going?”

“How you doing?” he asked. “What are you up to?” he added, suspiciously.

I looked up from my bug hunting, and saw he was giving me the “what are you doing around her, you don’t belong here” look that I’ve come to expect from people, but very rarely actually receive, and a range of responses ran through my head.

I discarded “none of your &%*@#&! business” and “just wandering around my neighborhood” out of hand, and instead regaled him with a 20 minute, very one-sided discussion of the marvels of shooting with reversed prime lenses, and the pros and cons of reversed primes over reversed zooms, and why don’t I just buy a proper macro lens, etc. Every time he tried to turn away, or call his dog, or escape, I moved closer and became more animated.

His look went from suspicion to “jeez, why did I ask?” rather quickly.

Despite prevailing in the first suspicious confrontation I’ve had on a solo photowalk, I still brought myself back home as soon as was feasible (about 10 minutes after the gentleman and his dog went back inside).

A different person would’ve tried to make friends with this guy, or put him at ease, or tell him where to go. But not me, I consciously chose to make him regret even looking at me.

I think he deserved this for his suspicious mind, and hope he thinks twice before bothering a stranger with a camera again.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO100, 1/125th (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. About 17 minutes of post processing to make the bug look in focus and blur out the leaf, which was actually pretty sharp. (If you’re curious, I think this lens is at its sharpest between f/5.6 and f/8, with f/4 being eminently reasonable as well. 1.8 is rather soft, with some improvement at 2 and 2.8. I’ve not shot beyond f/8 yet.)

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth benefits greatly from stopping down even if it’s a mere 1 and 1/3 stops.

The head, eye, and front segment are all about as sharp as this lens gets (I think… it might sharpen up a bit at f/5.6 and f/8, but I haven’t really tested it), and the composition has improved greatly from yesterday, thanks to a renewed consciousness of it.

Or, at least this one adheres to the rule of thirds…

There’s still an annoying bit: that leaf in the lower right hand corner. It distracts me to no end. I blurred, burned, and vignetted it, but it still drags the eye away from the target. I could crop it out, or clone it out, but I try to limit my post work as much as possible, and this image had quite a bit already, so I left it be.

But now that I said ‘crop’ I wonder if this would look nice as a square… Hummm.

I forgot headphones when I initially went out to go walking, and decided against going back for them. This led to some increased worrying, but I let it wash over and through me, and found a spot to focus on bees and focusing the reversed lens and trying to get a decent composition, and I managed to last about a half hour or 40 minutes, which is about what I hit with music too.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina). ISO400, 1/4000th (AP mode), f/4, -1EV. About 12 minutes of post work in Aperture, mostly to dull back that accursed leaf, but also to sharpen up the bee with the definition brush.

Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is difficult. Good exercise, but difficult. And it eluded me today, but I got closer than yesterday, so that counts for something.

At two separate points, I was busily shooting bees, stopped, looked up, found a couple pushing a baby stroller stopped inches from me, and realized I was blocking the sidewalk.

Two different times; two different couples; two different strollers. And two different babies, presumably.

Anyway. This picture has some problems. That the bee is not in particularly sharp focus is the least of its problems. The lighting is mid-Afternoon Awful, the composition is amateurish, and the framing incomprehensible.

All are good reasons to go and try again tomorrow!

Today’s record: the first ~40 minutes of TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light, which sadly was not quite dancy or poppy enough to keep me from worrying, though I was able to power through the worry and force myself to keep going two different times.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO400, 1/6400th (APmode), f/1.8, -1EV. About 3 minutes of slider play in Aperture to try to salvage a bit of dignity from what was a rather nice walk, if a largely poor showing in the photographic arena.

It is really hard to use a reversed 50mm on 50mm worth of extensions as a walkaround lens when the wind is gusting.

I think I’ll try just the 50 tomorrow, sans extension tubes, and see if I can get the bee and bug shots I missed today.

And I’m finding that music helps me focus on shooting and walking, and gives me less opportunity to worry, as long as the beat is danceable and the lyrics are catchy. Today was the first 40 minutes-ish of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto. I make no apologies: I’m a big Brian Eno fan…

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed, and stacked on 50mm extension. ISO400, 1/2000th (AP mode), f/1.8, -1EV. Absolutely no post processing, beyond Aperture’s default RAW conversion.

This is the broken mirror featured in the 365 back on days 165-171 inclusive. I didn’t even know the theme for Macro Monday over on G+ was ‘Broken’ today… Cosmic, I suppose.

And speaking of cosmic, I think this looks like a panel from a graphic novel, maybe, or some science fiction manga maybe.

Other than that, there’s not much to say here, I guess. I wish I could’ve come up with a better title, but my nothing came to mind. If it looked a bit different, I might have called it Snikt!, but it doesn’t, so I didn’t.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed and stacked on 100mm extension. ISO400, 1/400 (AP mode), f/1.8, -1EV. Less than a minute of processing in Aperture to bring out a bit more Pow than the usual RAW conversion provides.

Quick poll: How many colors do you see? (exclude white & black)

I’m thinking of submitting this rather lazy but pretty shot to +Peter From‘s Three Colors event over on the Google+, but I’m wonder if there are really more than three colors here.

Is a gradient from red to yellow two colors, three colors, or innumerable colors?

I don’t really know. Maybe you have an idea?

Oh! And I’m trying out a new (old) lens: Grandad’s Cosina-made Vivitar 50mm f/1.8. I’ve yet to put it to any serious tests, but I like some of the qualities it presents, though very many lenses render wholly out-of-focus pictures quite nicely.

D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina-made, probably from 1975). ISO400, f/1.8, 1/400th (APmode), -1EV. About 3 minutes of slider play in Aperture to help bring out the n colors.