365.120 The New Super Macro Bros.

I was saving this one for a day when I couldn’t make it outside due to inclement weather or other factors. Guess what? Other factors…

But this here represents something greater than 12:1. The white smudges are mm hash marks in a metal ruler, and the stuff at the top is the edge of that ruler

Come to think of it, I have a shot of the edge of the ruler all by itself:365.120 The New Super Macro Bros.

That’s the edge of the ruler, which might be 4mm deep… so the depth of field is around 2mm: that wavy blown focus stuff is the back half of the edge of the ruler… Jeez.

Anyway.

The New Super Macro Bros. reproduce one full mm and somewhere around .5mm, maybe .75mm, for a grand total of, say, 1.6mm.

The sensor on the D7000 is 23.6mm wide. 23.6/1.6=16.625, which makes my estimate rather way off…

16.625:1

yep.

16.625 to 1

Insane.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f.2.8 (at 2.8), reversed, mounted on the Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron) (at 210mm and f/3.5) via a set of step-down rings and a 52-52mm coupling ring, and all of that stacked on 104mm of extension tubes. ISO100, 1/4sec.

That is one dark setup, believe. I had to focus using 3 flashlights and a lamp, and take the shot with the SB700 at 1/2 power. (Look close, and you’ll see that I got close with the focusing, but not quite right…) Sheer craziness.
I wish I’d gone out walking instead, or stopped downtown on my way home and tried to try some street shooting, but I didn’t. I could blame work, which kept me an hour late. And I could blame the chores and phone calls I needed to make when I got home. And I could even blame traffic. But I won’t, because I can only blame my fear and my fear of changing my routine. Silliness.

365.119 Moving? or Recycling? or just picking?

While speeding down the highway on my way home after a longer-than-it-shoudl’ve-been type of shift,  I spotted this truck, loaded to the brim (and beyond) with all manner of bric-a-brac, and decided to snap a couple of shots of it through the window.

I didn’t want to slow down, and it took me a minute to get the camera out of the bag, take the lens cap off, and turn it on, so I missed the bulging rear end of this apparently well balanced pile of metal and plastic. It was really just a throwaway shot, something to add to an archive of images I created many years ago on long drives back and forth from Springfield, IL to Dallas of strange loads that the semis carry back and forth on 40.

But then I started looking at it, and decided that I liked the way the light was working, and I liked the relative sharpness of things next to the motion-blurred highway and whatnot.

And I didn’t make it out to shoot any street stuff, but decided that this sortof qualified: maybe a new genre… highway photography: capturing the strange and fleeting—the decisive moments—of human person and cargo transport.

Silly, I know, but at least I’ll have a reason to carry the camera back and fort to work every day.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8. ISO100, 1/125 (AP mode), f/11.

365.118 Kaleidoscopic

Well… I tried, but I got about half a block from the apartment and realized that I was trying to practice my street photography in a rough-ish neighborhood where most everyone is mostly suspicious of most everyone else, which wouldn’t be so bad except it was just after school let out so the only people wandering the streets were little kids in school uniforms and creepers like me, so I came back home, fully intending to wait an hour or so and then go back out. After all, it’s more likely that there will be non-child people wandering the streets after 5pm or so. But 5pm is my dinner time, and who knows if I’d get a shot at all and then what would I do about my 365 for today and so I shot the kaleidoscope I got for my birthday a couple weeks ago. Thing is, I drove through downtown to get home today instead of skirting it like I always do, with the specific intent of pulling over, tossing a couple of quarters in the meter, and wandering around for an hour or so, but I just kept driving. And then I was going to stop in the sort of grungy club district (as opposed to the pretty club district on the other side of the highway), but there wasn’t anybody walking around, except for the attractive punk couple who were having a bit of a spat that I would’ve walked right past had I parked a couple of blocks ago like I planned but didn’t, and so I drove on home with the intent of walking, which, if you read all that, you’ll remember that I failed at, and so you get this picture of the Collier Kaleidoscope in action instead.

tl;dr—title should read “Kaleidoscopic Failure” I suppose.

And I will try again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, and again and again until I get some control over—and then let go of—my fears.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron), reversed and in macro mode (fyi: it makes no difference that I could tell). ISO100, 8 seconds, f/8.

365.117 Catfish, Livers

This is my first real attempt at a street photograph.

I’ve been wanting to try some street shooting in hopes of using the long walks and (weak) interactions with strangers to help me get over some of my fears and get a bit of exercise. Today, I succeeded, partly.

I walked down Gaston to Munger, up past Swiss, back down Sycamore to Moreland, to Swiss, and back to the apartment via the Annex side. I studiously avoided shooting the mostly downtrodden cast of characters I passed, but did snap this no-look shot—held the camera up to the middle of my chest and snap!—on the first leg of the walk.

FYI: if you’re ever in Old East Dallas, and have a hankering’ for some good fried chicken, don’t hesitate to pop in to the Chicken House. Be sure to get a fried pie to go along with your chicken and okra: they’re fried in the same grease as the chicken, and take on a brilliant salty, chicken flavor… If I wasn’t vegetarian, I’d be walking over there right now…

So how did the D7000 perform? Well, it’s large, loud, and pretty obvious that it’s a camera. A guy told me to “watch out that you don’t get that camera stolen walking around here” from 25 feet away… Otherwise, it performed as well as it usually does, image quality wise, when combined with the 24mm ai.

So how well does this work as a street photograph? Not particularly well, but better than I expected. I can’t go back and reshoot it (though I can go out walking again, and plan to tomorrow), but I could change up the post processing a bit—if you can’t tell, I processed this with a rather heavy hand…

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. ISO400, 1/800th (AP mode), f/8. Big push to contrast and definition, nudges to exposure, black point, brightness, vibrancy, saturation, and Idon’trememberwhatelse.

365.116 Jeez! Get a Room!

Just trying to take an innocent photowalk with the Kiron-made Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5, when what do I come upon but a bee with his proboscis shoved into a little flower. It’s disgusting what bees and flowers get on to, right out in public and all. I mean…

/jk. I tried to catch various bees a couple of times, but this was the most in-focus of the 60-odd pictures of bees I made.

The zoom ring on the Vivitar is slightly sticky in spots, and since the zoom acts as the focus mechanism in macro mode, I tend to miss a bunch of shots. It didn’t help that the wind was rather fierce at times, the flowers are small, and the bees are skittish either.

This shot is not at full macro, which would be roughly twice as big, but there was no way I could focus by rocking back and forth given how quickly these little suckers were moving and how erratic the wind was. I estimate this to be in the 1:3 range, and really wish the Vivitar barrel markings were even slightly helpful, but there are only three straight lines: a white one that indicates distance in normal operation, a yellow one that indicates something in macro mode—I’ve yet to determine what exactly—and a thinner red one in between that serves an indeterminate purpose. There are no depth of field markings at any distance.

Anyway. This is straight out of the camera, and I think the Vivitar performed nicely.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron version). ISO400, 1/100, f/8.

And if you got this far, you get a treat: an outtake from today… Enjoy.

365.116 Jeez! Get a Room!

365.115 …what I did all morning…

is less exciting and far less useful than the 40 seconds that this crazy reflected light shone on the wall.

Luckily, I dropped what I was doing, whipped out the camera, and fired off half a dozen shots in AP mode at various -EV settings, otherwise I would be cursing myself and wondering what to shoot for the 365 today…

So what did I do all day? Well, I’ve been wanting a more compact camera to carry around, and to try out street shooting with, as the D7000 is rather large and loud and bulky for general use, and the iPhone4 seems a bit dinky. So I researched small point-and-shoot type cameras all morning, looking for a pocketable (or slightly larger) version of the D7000. [In case you’re wondering, such a beast does not exist: the sensors in pocket cameras are too small to offer the dynamic range, bokeh, or anything else of even the crop sensor in the D7000.]

Barring that, I was looking for a compact point-and-shoot with easily accessible manual controls, decent image quality, a wide aperture, and practical focal length(s) for general walkaround purposes, i.e. something offering a range like that of the the 36-72mm E-Series or the 35-200mm Tokina (both of which would blow away any lenses on any point-and-shoot cameras, despite their age). [My current favorite lens on the D7000 is the 24mm f/2.8, which offers a field of view similar to that of a 36mm lens on a 35mm camera, and I’d like to be able to go from that to ~150 or ~200 on occasion.]

When all was accounted for (price in the $300-$600 range; image quality; ease-of-use; relative size), I found that there are roughly two cameras out there that fit my desires: the recent-ish Canon s100 and the 2-year-old Panasonic Lumix lx5, neither of which seem like they’d get used more or be more inconspicuous than the iPhone.

Good news: I saved myself ~$500 and a trip to Arlington.

Bad news: I stared blankly at a computer screen for 7.5 hours instead of finishing up my weekend chores, taking myself to breakfast, and going to a photography meetup at the Renaissance Faire.

But at least I had the presence of mind to grab this shot, so that’s a check in the win column I suppose.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI. ISO100, 1/80, f/2.8, -2EV, rather heavily processed when compared to my usual post-work of late: +1.6 to Exposure, Black Point; +.14 to Brightness; +.4 to Saturation; +.1 to Vibrancy.

365.114 for lack of a better shot…

As promised, I took the Kiron-made Vivitar 20-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (version 1) to try and test its bee-shooting performance against the Zomb-E Series and the Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5. Of course, it is about 20 degrees colder in Dallas today than yesterday, and the bees are all napping, so that will have to wait for another day.

I did walk around for about 30 minutes with the Vivitar, though, took or made 115 shots, and got a great workout to the arms: that Vivi is a beast of a lens, another 2″ longer than the Tokina, and about twice as big overall as the Zomb-E.

In other words, the Series 1 is definitely not a walkaround lens.

One thing that is fun, though, is the brilliant operation of this real beauty of a lens.

The closest focus distance—in normal operations—is just shy of 2 meters at all focal lengths. Pull it all the way in, press a little button, spin the ring, and you’re in macro mode, with the circle of confusion about 2 meters away. Zoom out, and the circle of confusion moves towards you. At the 70mm position, you’re at ~1:2 at about 4 inches.

So the lens offers continuous focus from 4″ to infinity, albeit with a slight hiccough at the 2 meter mark, and zooms from 1:2 to 210mm.

Brilliant.

I know I’m grossly oversimplifying the mechanics here, but it’s still quite the performer: among the sharpest lenses I own, for sure, with great saturation and contrast, and creamy-dreamy bokeh.

I’ll need to do some intensive strength training if I want to take this lens on any half-day photowalks… Or I could just keep taking it on half hour afternoon jaunts, and I’ll have some serious guns in no time!

Nice. And yet another great bargain at ~$35.

D7000. Vivitar 70-210mm f/3.5 Series 1 (Kiron version). ISO800 (to contend with the overcast afternoon), 1/250, f/8.