Macro in Gunpowder

"I need to photograph some water," said Tom's text message. I was pretty wiped from the hike up to Weverton Cliffs earlier that day, but when a friend needs to photograph some water, who am I to refuse? Eventually we agreed on Gunpowder Falls State Park at 9am the next day.

I still wanted to keep it simple though. I decided to focus on getting some macro shots with the 5D, 50/1.8, and EF25 II while Tom did water shots. By the time we were done though, I didn't think I'd come away with as many good shots as I'd hoped; at least not as many as I got at Patapsco last year. I was wrong.



The real stars of the shoot were some very cooperative spiders though. I'm still amazed at the detail of these shots. It seems like a crime to only post the shots at web resolution though, so I've included a couple extra shots at (nearly) full resolution. I never knew a daddy longlegs had eyes like that. And is that the male hanging out underneath? Crazy.





Here's another spider that was just hanging out in the middle of his web near the ground. Just to give you a sense of scale, his legs spanned about the size of a dime. I didn't even notice the "large" hairs on his legs until I pulled the image up at full resolution.





I also came away with a few interesting leaf structure shots. Mother Nature is clearly a graphic designer.





I used the same techniques as I did in Patapsco last time, so check out that article for more info. By the way, the gear I used can be had for about $1000. Happy shooting.

Macro in Patapsco

Ok, back to actual photography. Today I took my 5D and 50/1.8 to Patapsco Valley State Park in Elkridge, Maryland. I was somewhat confined to a particular part of the park though, so I decided to take my extension tube (EF25II) and explore my little corner of the park in macro. As always, God is in the details, and if you're shooting macro, the world is suddenly a whole lot larger.

I was shooting everything handheld today, which is somewhat tricky for macro photography. A couple things that helped though:

• Use AI Focus or Continuous focus mode. With such a shallow depth-of-field (millimeters), you and the subject will inevitably sway towards and away from each other. AI/Continuous focus can help compensate for the constantly changing distance between you and the subject.
• Switch to manual focus when auto-focus fails you (it will at times), or as a starting point before you turn on auto-focus.
• Shoot subjects that are in direct sunlight, with shade in the background. The sunlight/shade contrast will help your subject stand out from the background. The direct sunlight will also give you the high shutter speed you need to compensate for all the little movements that can occur in the macro world.
• Don't be afraid to shoot without looking through the viewfinder. Good macro subjects are sometimes high, low, or in tight spaces. Aim the camera as best you can and give it your best shot. If your camera has a Live View feature, then definitely use it.

Here's my top five for the day. There's a little more detail in the flickr comments for each photo, so click on the image if you want to know more.











Happy shooting, one and all, large or small.

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...