Posts in Category: macro
4/9/2009
Pioneers of Spring
On my way out to do some new product testing yesterday I discovered these little guys springing up in the yard. At last. We still have isolated patches of snow around.
I took a very low angle, with the camera resting on my hands and my hands on the ground, using the flip out LCD of the H50. The problem was eliminating distractions in the background, and, even so, the background was already in sun, while the flowers were shade, lit by a stray shaft of extreme side light. Tricky.
I like the way the light on the flowers picks up the texture of the folded petals, and of course the shapes and colors of these brave spring pioneers.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro mode (almost touching the forward flower). F4.0 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom I had to deal with the bright background. Recovery helped but not enough. I used a Graduated Filter drawn in from the upper left toward the flowers at an angle, and then the Adjustment Brush to mask an area behind the flowers on the right. For both I reduced exposure. That made the blue of the sky way too intense, so I also reduced saturation for both the Graduated Filter and the Adjustment Brush mask. Then the usual Vibrance and Clarity settings, and the Sharpen portrait preset.
From Around Home.
4/6/2009
Primrose in the Morning
This shot will benefit from being viewed at a larger size. Click on it and choose your size from the settings across the top of the viewing page on SmugMug.
This is one of those shots where I wish I could say I took it because its best feature…but honestly I did not even see the dew drops on the petals until I was processing the image in Lightroom. I was out birding for a very few moments before work, hurrying around my first visit to a new location in a Galveston (I am in Galveston only once a year for a few days) and I was almost back to the car. I had taken several flower shots along the way, since the birds were pretty thin, and I saw the primrose by the path, flipped the LCD out, bent over, took three shots, and was back in the car in less than a minute. Hours later, when I downloaded the photos and loaded them into Lightroom, I picked the best of the three by the thumbnail and opened it in the Develop mode. Then I saw the dew drops. Surprise!
I know from my own experience that I am often surprised by what I see in my own best images…after I have taken them (sometimes weeks or years after).
Sony DSC H50 at full wide in macro mode (about 1/2 inch from the flower). F5.0 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I applied just a touch of Recovery to make the water drops pop out a bit more, some Clarity and Vibrance, and the Sharpen portrait preset.
From Galveston 2009.
3/29/2009
Monumental Shell
As I have mentioned before, one of the features I like best about the H9/H50 cameras from Sony is the tilt out articulated LCD. It allows getting right down on the ground for images without actually laying down. It allows upward angles from ground level (something that is difficult even if you do lay down). In this case, laying down was not really an option unless I was willing to get wet all over.
When you combine the articulated LCD with a very close macro ability, all kinds of new photographic options open up.
Just a shell on the beach, becomes a monument to shelldom.
Sony DSC H9 at full wide (32mm equivalent). F5.0 @ 1/200 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. Macro mode.
In Lightroom, basic processing for Presence and sharpness. Recovery and some Fill Light was used to aid the transparency of the water. I used a graduated filter effect to further darken the sky, and added a bit of saturation to the filter as well. Levels were adjusted to bright up the lights +60 and subdue the darks -20. (It is maybe important to mention again that though it sounds like a lot of manipulation in Lightroom, I spent less than 3 minutes on this image in post…Lightroom is very fast.)
From Around Home.
3/26/2009
Lichen Horns: Acadia National Park
One afternoon in Acadia National Park last summer I had what amounted to a macro holiday. There were mushrooms and lichen everywhere, and they were particularly photogenic (who knows why). You know how it works. You get tuned in. If you see one, if you see two, if you see three…then you are going to see hundreds because now you are looking for them. You are in macro mode. You are in the macro groove.
I found several stands of fruiting (flowering?) lichen, with bright red horns, and took maybe a dozen shots during the afternoom…widely spaced out among all the mushroom shots. This is my favorite.
One of the great things about the Sony H50 is that, at the wide end of the zoom, it focuses to 2 cm. That is really, really close. (In fact, once while shooting in the rain and fog, the very similar previous generation H9 focused on a water drop on the outer lens element, just for an instant.) Macro focus at longer focal lengths is equally impressive. There are challenges to working this close, but it is really great to be able to do it at all without special attachments.
The other great thing about the H50 is the built in, sensor shift, image stabilization. Stabilization makes shooting hand held at low shutter speeds possible (or much more possible). In the subdued light of the forest floor, stabilization gives you the freedom to work quickly and naturally, without complicated tripod set-ups.
One of the challenges of working close is not getting in your own light. What made this day ideal for macro work was that the light level was fairly bright, but high overcast above the tree canopy made the light diffuse. No heavy shadows and enough light to work. Ideal. I could generally find a well lighted angle on almost any macro subject.
For this shot, I backed off a bit from closest macro, and zoomed up to about 40mm equivalent to frame the full cluster of lichen.
Lichen with the Sony DSC H50 at about 40mm equivalent. F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Only the most basic sharpening and presence adjustments in Lightroom.
From Acadia Shrooms and Lichen. The whole gallery is worth a look. One amazing macro day.
One more teaser.
Can you resist?
3/22/2009
Stroked by the sea
A break from Scotland.
Went to the beach yesterday to test my new toy: the Sony Webbie HD camercorder/camera. While there I got fascinated by what the tide had done to the seaweed clinging to the rocks now above tide-line. Abstract, but completely real. These kinds of small details always interest me. I honestly don’t know how interesting they are to others, but I love to capture them.
For this image I found a small light colored snippet to place at one of the powerpoints in the image, hopefully to give the eye something to latch on to and make sense of the whole image.
To give you a sense of scale, the light snippet is about 1/3 of an inch long.
Sony DSC H50 full wide (31mm equivalent). F5.6 @ 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. Macro mode.
In Lightroom, a touch of Recovery. Some Clarity and Vibrance. Portrait sharpen preset.
From Around Home.
3/19/9009
Flowers of the Machair
The Machair is the region just behind the dunes on the Hebrides: traditionally the richest farming land, and site of the original permanent settlements in the islands. In season it is an amazing spread of wildflowers.
I cropped this shot in tight, to capture just the mass of the display of sunflowers. You can just see Ben More through them along the skyline. Shot low to the ground, using the swing out LCD on the H50, and close in, using the mid range of the zoom to compress the scene slightly.
Sony DSC H50 at about 80mm equivalent. F5.0 @ 1/250 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, besides the cropping (necessary both for effect and to eliminate some distracting weeds in the bottom of the frame), I used my standard Presence settings (added Vibrance and Clarity) and Landscape sharpen.
From Scotland.
And one bonus shot. Another Machair flower view.
On the Machair
(You might note the change in venue here: all my sites are migrating to my lightshedder.com address. Your older links will continue to work.)
3/11/2009
California Poppy (click image for larger views)
Still at Sunset Cliffs Park on Point Loma in San Diego California. The poppies were in full glory along the rough trails of the park, along with a variety of other wild and semi-wild flowers.
For this shot I used about a 200mm equivalent to isolate a small patch of particularly well lit poppies. The strong side, almost back light, made the flowers appear to glow with a light of their own against the dark green backdrop. Then in Lightroom, I cropped in even tighter, to emphasize the diagonal of the flowers, and to eliminate deep shadows on the left and right. This kind of shot is difficult because there is no one center of interest, but I feel that here, the rough line of flowers across the diagonal pulls the image together.
Sony DCS H50 at 200mm equivalent. F4.0 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, besides the cropping, I used a little recovery to pull the orange highlights back, and my usual bit of Clarity and less Vibrance than normal in the Presence panel. Vibrance favors yellows and oranges, and too much would have burned out the orange highlights. Portrait sharpen preset.
From San Diego 2009.
And as a bonas: a few more wild and semi-wild flowers from Sunset Cliffs.
2/27/2009
Sheep's Bit
Taken at my feet right after the shot from yesterday. I was standing in wildflowers (another reason I was not eager to move around much). This is Sheep Bit, which we saw all through the Highlands, and on the Hebrides.
The H50, with its tip-out, articulated LCD panel, allows for extreme low shots, and the 2 cm close focus makes for interesting macros. With shots like this, you have to pay attention to what is in the background. I have a wider shot of the same flower which I like, but I will have to go back and edit out some tallish weed behind the flower, breaking the skyline, to be completely happy with it. This works for me. The fence pulls the eye a bit, but the flower is a strong subject, and placed right at the upper left powerpoint of the image, so that it holds focus. I find the bokeh interesting as well, with what amounts to a swirl of pink clover caused by the shape of the hill.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent), at about closest focus (2 cm from the flower). F4.0 @ 1/250 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, I used the Recovery slider to put some drama back into the sky, and some Fill Light to pick up the purples in the flower. I moved the black point to the right to add intensity, and used both Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Scotland.
2/17/2009
Rime of a different kind
Another Rime shot from my morning image trek the other winter day. This one is straight on macro, taken from inches away, at the edge of a small ditch along the border of the marsh, where the falling tide had draped the rime over grasses. The blue sky behind sets the image off.
You would have laughed to see me down in the ditch, my flip up LCD flipped up, bent over double to get the low angle, with the camera strap clutched close to keep it from dragging in the ice. The camera was millimeters from the ground, and angled slightly up. I teetered there for several moments taking a series of shots as I varied the angle and distance from the edge of the ditch. I don’t know what anyone watching might have thought I was doing, but I can tell you I was very thankful for the flip out LCD on the H50 along about then.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equiv.). F5.6 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Snow Scene select and -.7EV exposure compensation. Macro mode.
Recovery in Lightroom for the transparency of the ice. Clarity and Portrait sharpen preset. Vibrance for the grasses and the sky. Cropped slightly at the bottom to eliminate out of focus ice.
1/7/2009
Shell Heap
The beaches on Sanibel Island are some of the best shelling (I am told) in the world. I can believe it. This shot is from a “drift” of shells, pushed up by high tides and storms, that is at lest 3 feet deep and about 30×30 feet square…and that is just what is exposed. People dig there for more exotic shells, leaving a cratered look and lots of little heaps of shell.
The challenge is capturing the extent of it…trying to give an impression of just how many shells we are talking about here. This is one of several shots taken while my wife dug around in the pile. The flip out LCD on the Sony makes low angle shots like this possible (or maybe comfortable.)
Sony DSC H50 at about 60mm equiv. F8.0 @ 1/2000 @ ISO 100. Programed Auto with -1.7 EV
In Lightroom I had to increase the exposure value. This is one reason to be careful with EV settings. It is very easy to forget that you have the EV setting off 0, and misexpose following shots. Sharpening, Vibrance, and Clarity.
The image is from the Sanibel and Everglades Gallery.