… in a network of lines that intersect

More fun with the new (old) lens!

This one begged to go b/w from the start, since the subject looks b/w already to my eyes, but goes green & yellow at these magnifications/scales/distances.

Fun, if wildly dusty, times. Yes, I cleaned the sensor again last night, and, yes, it got dust on it from merely taking the lens off, adding extension tubes, and replacing the lens. I’m content to clone the ~20-odd bits of dust out for now, but I foresee a desktop dust-removing, air-purifying thingy in my very near future.

It would be nice if someone could make a high quality lens that focuses down to 8:1 or 10:1, but also to infinity, and has built-in extension tubes of, say, 150mm. It wouldn’t necessarily need to zoom (to be the ideal lens for me, anyway), but only combine all of the above in one package, preferably with a metal mount and depth of field markings for 5.6, 8,  11, 16, and 22, and also with a smooth focus throw and fast AF for everything above 1:2 with no focus breathing.

Are you listening, Nikon? or Tokina? or Tamron? or Sigma? or Anyone that will make one of these in an F mount for something less than $2500?

Surely it’s not that far beyond the laws of physics, right? HA!

Anyway.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, and extended by 100mm. ISO1600 (leftover from last night), 1/20 (chosen by the camera), f/5.6.

365.83 8:1, yes, 8:1

A new old toy arrived today: a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai. This is incredible. Sharp, contrasty, good color rendition and saturation, well-corrected, and capable of an astonishing 8:1 reproduction ratio on 100mm of extension tubes.

D7000. Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, reversed, on 100mm of extension tubes. ISO400, 1 second, f/11.

More pictures of a ruler to follow, later in the week…

365.82 The Punisher

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, and fetched the 75-150, which had the reversing ring attached to it.

‘Oh, why not try again?’ I thought, and I mounted the 30 on the end. Lo and behold, it worked!

So off came the 36-72, and on went the Super Macro Cousins: Sigma 30mm f/1.4, reversed and taped to the Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 E Series, and the both of them mounted to the D7000. ISO400, 1/2 sec., both wide open.

And instead of being the subject of the experiment, the 36-72 became the object on which the experiment focused, if a nanometers-worth of depth of field can be counted as ‘focused.’

If you’re wondering, I make the reproduction ratio of this combo something close to 5:1.

This shot was cropped very slightly to center the Punisher in the frame. I’m very much looking forward to the arrival of some focus rails later this week.

Good times.

365.81 Spring Creek Forest Preserve Photowalk

I came across an oddity in Dallas county… the Spring Creek Forest Preserve in Garland TX, of all places.

So Momma and I went out there (all 10 minutes from her North Dallas abode) and wandered around for a few hours.

From the time we left the car (about 9:15am) until we were leaving (about 11:45am), a tent meeting was going on at the horse farm next door. It began with a prayer meeting: scary screaming and wailing, punctuated by cries to the Lord. This was followed by some singing, which I missed most of due to the loud Rock and Roll I listen to so much of the time—and have for such a long time—and partly due to the distance between us and the meeting. And the last 3/4 of the walk we were accompanied by a fire-and-brimstone, scorched earth, come-to-Jesus sort of sermon, the likes of which I hadn’t heard since the early 1990s, and didn’t really believe existed much anymore.

Anyway.

Who would of thought that the City of Garland would support a forest preserve within its borders?

Not me, for sure.

But there it is, stretching from the west side of Shiloh Road to at least Garland Road on the east, with Shrub forming the northern boundary, and Arapaho perhaps 5 minutes to the south.

The light was awful (bright, but completely overcast), and the D7000 performed about as I expected under those conditions. Of course, I can’t really blame the camera for any of it: most of the problems were due to operator error more than anything the camera did or didn’t do.

It didn’t help that I took a 3-shot bracket early on, and then left the camera on bracket mode for the next 50-60 shots, leaving 1/3 totally blown out, and another 1/3 way underexposed, not that the compositions were any good anyway.

I really need to work on my forest-scape composition skills (and probably on my landscape, portrait, macro, abstract, artistic, and every other sort of photographic genre as well). But that’s what the 365 is all about anyway, yes?!?

But the trek was more about having a nice hike with momma than anything else, so the morning was a success, especially since we got somewhat lost on the way back…

So the shot at the top is today’s 365. It was cropped slightly and heavily treated with various Topaz Labs products.

Another shot in the group was HDRified with Photoshop 5 and then treated to Topaz Labs fun even more heavily than the 365 shot.

The others got a variety of exposure, black point, contrast, detail, brightness, saturation, and levels adjustments in Aperture.

All were shot with the D7000 and Sigma 30mm f/1.4. ISO400, f/4, shutter speed chosen by the camera.

Dallas Blooms photowalk

The Dallas Blooms photowalk went down today, organized by Greg D of the DFW Photography Club of Texas MeetUp group, and held at the Dallas Arboretum.

I took the D7000 and 75-150mm E Series (mounted in reverse…), as well as the Ricoh 35 ZF. I finished a roll of Fuji Pro 400H and started a roll of Ilford HP5 Plus, and will post pictures once I get around to getting the film developed.

I set the reversed 75-150 to f/8, and the ISO to 400, and let the camera decide on shutter speeds. All in all, it did as expected: overexposing by 1/4 stop most of the time, which gives some nice wiggle room, while also creating some nice blown highlights occasionally.

And the 75-150 performed admirably as a walk-around lens. Previous photowalks have had only the Sigma for company, and I’ve goten quite used to the 30mm field of view. Consequently, there was a ton of stuff that I couldn’t capture, since the reversed 75-150 is pretty much stuck at 150. The Ricoh has a 40mm lens attached to it, and I hope at least a few of the shots came out, though it will take god-only-knows how long until I get around to getting the film developed (probably not until after I finish the roll of Ilford, and definitely not until I find a decent develop-and-hi-res-scan house in Dallas or within mailing distance).

So all of these were shot with the D7000 and 75-150mm E Series mounted in reverse. ISO400, AP mode, f/8. I hope you enjoy.

Super Macro Brothers: the Weigh-In

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 @ 14″ (6.75″), or 1:1.5.
    • Reversed and Extended, it reproduces 17 x 11 @ 13.75″ (3.75″), or ~1.5:1!

The 36-72mm, by contrast, does simultaneously better and worse:

    • Reversed, it reaches 13 x 9 @ 8″ (3″). ~1.75:1
    • Reversed and Extended, 7 x 4.5 @ 11″ (2″). 3.5:1!

This focusing distance is ludicrously small, and very difficult to work with. I had to move the entire set up all around to even focus on the ruler, as the depth of field becomes rather small.

Something interesting happens when they come together, though.

  • 75-150 mounted straight, 36-72 reversed, we get 5.5 x 3.75 @ 15″ (2″), or ~4.2:1
  • and both reversed yields 5.25 x 3.5 at the same 15″ from the sensor plane, or (slightly less than) 2″ from the front of the lens.

This is interesting to me. Why is there so little difference between two? It would seem that two reversed lenses would be better than one, yet it seems to matter very little whether the first lens is straight or not.

In fact, some vignetting happens when the 75-150 is on straight.

I’m sure there’s a mathematical explanation for this, but I’m not much of a mathematician. If you can help, let me know in the comments.

Now I want to get closer! Closer! How close can I get?* I don’t know, but the depth of field is going to be tiny when I get there! I can only hope the bokeh is pleasing…

*I’ll maybe get a bit closer in the next week or 10 days: I just ebayed a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai and an EL-Nikkor 50mm f/2.8 photographic enlarging lens, and another set of extension tubes and some more reversing rings, and I’ll have another report when I get all that stuff played with. And I decided to hold off on the Tokina for awhile since I’m already getting to 4+:1 with the Super Macro Bros.