Veiny

It's been raining here in Baltimore all day, so I figured this would be a good time to play around with my new Canon EF25 II macro extension tube. After a few close-up shots of my Xpan, I decided that the world didn't need any more camera porn today. I switched over to the broccoli plant that's been surviving living by the window for the past several months.



I don't have a true macro lens to compare it to, but I do notice quite a bit of softness in the full resolution image. This could be due to the excruciatingly narrow depth of field. I suspect that it's actually due to the fact that the lens is being pushed beyond its normal parameters by the extension tube. The image that's projected from the back of the lens is significantly larger when the extension tube is attached. As such, any softness in the lens quality is much larger as well.

This is similar to the rule of thumb when using teleconverters. A 2x teleconverter will double your lens's effective length, but will also halve its effective sharpness. This is fine if you've got a very sharp lens, but if you're using a zoom, you may be making some real sacrifices in image quality.

Hopefully I'll get my hands on a true macro 100/2.8 soon so I can make a real comparison. For now though, the EF25 should do for the amount of macro shooting I do.

In the meantime, maybe I'll try shooting in the rain...

G9 Walkabout

In keeping with all the other blogs out there, I figured I should start the year off right and wish both all of my subscribers a happy new year. Happy New Year!

Baltimore rang in the new year with some surprisingly nice January morning weather, so I decided to take the G9 out for a little walk and see what I could find. I was going for something a little more artsy/Ben Roberts. I need more practice.

Two things I love about living downtown are: a) there's a virtually unlimited number of routes you can take wandering around, and b) the city is always changing. It's organic. Not so much the product of man, but men (men-made not man-made). Anyway, here the take:











Also, as some of you might have noticed, I've been adding more back-dated content to the blog. Ever since I took the old TopFivePhotos.com down, I've been wanting to give this blog a little more meat. It's going to be a gradual process, as there were over 200 entries on the old site. The old TopFivePhotos.com didn't have any mechanism for readers to enter comments, so if you have any questions about the older content, please don't hesitate to post.

Happy shooting in the new year!