365.95 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series, part 1

I have some sad news, friends… A terrible accident that has brought great disruption to the D7000 family.

Yesterday, I tested out reversing the 24mm f/2.8 ai on the 75-150, and stacking that assembly on the 104mm extension tube set. (FYI: This combo achieves 10:1 reproduction. Yes, 10:1, and reasonably sharp, if rather difficult to handle, for less than $350: GoGo.)

At some point during this test, I did something—I’m not sure what as yet—that caused the focus to stick at the close-focusing distance, and now it will not budge. The zoom still works fine, but the focus is no more.

I am rather saddened by this loss, even though I maybe took 10 pictures with the lens mounted in the traditional manner.

Luckily, the 75-150 works fine in Zombie mode… And I have two 52mm reverse ring, so one of them can just live on the 75-150… And since there’s one lens on the camera all the time, I have an extra rear cap, so GoGo.

It’s still sad though.

Anyways… this week will be 75-150 remembrance week here on my 365 project. I hope you like beautiful bokeh, saturated color, and tack-sharp centers!

D7000. 75-150mm f/3.5 Zomb-E Series. ISO800, 1/160th (AP mode), f/3.5.

Addendum: I was going to buy another one straight away, but picked up a Vivitar 70-210 Series 1, first version (made by Kiron, and purportedly a pretty honking decent lens), for $35, and it should be a winner for the tiny bit of telephoto stuff that I do at present. I will be watching ebay and keh and the various big camera stores for another 75-150, even though I won’t use it much. I want a fully working one for my collection, and they’re relatively cheap, though not as cheap as the vivitar… Ok ok, and I also picked up a Tokina AT-X 35-200mm f/3.5-4.5 that might make an interesting walk-around, if a bit longish on the short end. I’m hopeful, despite not being able to find much in the way of reviews…

I hate my love for gear, and despise my constant drive to acquire more, but love that I’m happy to satisfy these (mostly) with 30 year old manual lenses.

365.94 Variation within Repetition

(or, I <3 Philip Glass)

I found the source of the strange flare I got whenever I tried to use flash or any other bright lights with the new macro rig… the filter that came with the Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI, and that the seller proclaimed had never left the front of the lens in all its years…

I guess he never shot macro with a flash.

Anyway…

The flash was bounced off of one of those big honking containers of Cheese flavored Fishy Crackers, the 1.87lb, 850g, Gallon-size (or larger) laminated, foil-lined cardboard boxes, that I carefully (and with no small amount of cursing, but also no paper cuts) opened out as flat as it would go.

Tomorrow, probably, this reflector will become a sort of big, cornucopia-shaped diffuser just for macro. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out.

For today, it was just draped over the camera-mounted flash, lens, and subject (in this case, a 1/4″ fine-threaded bolt). Nice light, methinks.

D7000, Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI, reversed and extended by 104mm. ISO100, 1/250th, f/8. SB-700, mounted on the camera, in manual mode, zoomed to 24mm (by the camera… so much for manual), 1/16th power. Very minor adjustments to black point, contrast, and definition in Aperture.

365.93 tree droppings @ 8:1

I was having a ton of fun building little alien worlds and inventing nice/scary stories about them until I found that the lump of tree droppings I brought in was heavily populated by some tiny, white, grub-type things… I didn’t manage to get a photo of any, as the depth of field is too tiny and I’m stuck on a tripod and shooting multi-second shutter speeds until I build a macro flash diffuser thingy (hint: weekend project).

So I tossed it outside and got to playing with levels in Aperture a bit, and here we are.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 AI, reversed and stacked on 104mm extension. ISO100, 8 seconds, f/8.

And does anyone have any idea what the dark band at the bottom is about? I’ve been getting this on quite a few (but not all) shots with this particular macro rig. It seems to happen most often when the lens is tilted forward beyond 10 degrees or so.

If you have any ideas, please to pass them on!

365.92 BlowUp

(For those of you who haven’t seen the Antonioni film of the same title, this likely makes no sense.)

I’ve done a bit of film-shooting lately with the old Ricoh 35-ZF, and I took a roll of Ilford HP-5 400 film to be developed and scanned, and the nice people gave me a 4×6 version of a proof sheet: all the images printed out on a 4×6 sheet of paper, 7 shots per line, at something approaching 16x11mm.

I taped this proof sheet to something sturdy, reversed the 24mm f/2.8 on 104mm of extension tubes, and started looking…

Is that a body behind the bushes?

So this image began as a 35mm negative, was shrunk to less than half-size, printed, and shot at 8:1 reproduction ratio.

I had a tough time focusing, since the print is so incredibly grainy and blurry at these shrinkage/magnifications, and the first round of shots were marred by dust on the print: invisible to the naked eye, but massive and wildly textured on the screen. But I think this one came out fine, and at the 600×800 resolution I’m sharing this, perhaps you see what I see… if not, go watch “Blow Up” by Antonioni, and then come back and see what you see.

HA!

D7000, Nikon 24mm f/2.8, reversed on 104mm of extension tubes. ISO100, 3 seconds, f/2.8. Some slight alterations to exposure, saturation, contrast, definition, black point, and then a conversion to Black & White in Aperture.

365.91 Ohne Titel (niedlich auge)

A second set of attempts (see 365.15 for the first set…) to capture my right eye with a reversed 75-150, this time with flash to minimize the effects of the eye shake focus, but still fail.

I tried reversed, reversed with 52mm of extensions, reversed with 104mm of extension, and mounted straight, but with 104mm extension, at apertures from 3.5 to 11.

I got 4 or 5 shots that were pretty much in focus (on the bloodshot corners, anyway), but well off center. (An articulated screen would come in handy, for sure… maybe the next body I buy (in ~3 years) will have one. Until then, I’ll make due with what I have, and you’ll likely get to see some more soft focus self-portraits like this, say ‘Yay!’)

I had light pipe (see this post right here for more details) rocking, with the SB700 set to 1/8th power, and was handholding it about 3 inches in front and to the right of my eye. (No, I didn’t go blind, this time…)

I sorta sat around after uploading the first set of failed attempts, then tried again, then shot some other stuff, then came back and saw this one and two others, did some simple and minimal tweaking of exposure, black point, brightness, contrast, definition, saturation and levels, and *poof*!

D7000, 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series, reversed and extended by 52mm. ISO100, 1/250, f/3.5. SB700 at 1/8th in the light pipe, near camera left.

365.90 Part III: Bad 1970s Concert Poster

(See Part I and Part II)

Just for kicks, I decided to copy the original and see what Topaz Labs had to offer the 365 today…

I thought about writing down all the presets I went through, but thought I would remember and was sure I wouldn’t mess around too long…

and 5 or 6 or 7 presets later…

I found I had created an outtake from an Edgar Winter Group or Mountain or Grand Funk Railroad or, hell, Black Sabbath record cover design… or something wretched…

365.90 Part II: Girl’s Best Friend

(See Part I for more information)

And so the adjustments began with my usual pulling back exposure, pumping black point, messing with brightness, and a slight tweak of the saturation, I decided to see what full desaturation looked like… nice, but missing something.

So I returned saturation to its original point, and tried out various built-in b/w presets in Aperture: none satisfied.

Back to desaturated, and full doubling of Vibrancy just for fun and BAM! That’s it…

A few tweaks later, and Girl’s Best Friend was born.

Stay tuned for Part III.