Posts in Category: macro
Sunflowering Bumblebee
I posted a shot yesterday on my Facebook and Google+ accounts from this series. I went out yesterday afternoon to cover my bicycle as a storm was about to hit us and found the newly blossomed Sunflowers by the back deck full of Bumblebees. Back in for the camera!
I am loving the macro ability of the Sony HX400V. I can get to 6cm at 85mm equivalent and to 3cm at 50mm equivalent. That makes for some very effective macros! This shot is at about 75mm equivalent. It gave me enough distance to work the Bee and the scale I wanted. 🙂 The Sony also makes Program shift just about as easy as it can be. There is a control wheel under your thumb which, in Program, controls the shift. That allows me to fine tune the aperture for depth of field in my macros and landscapes.
ISO 80 @ 1/250th @ f4. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet.
Northern Blazing Star
It is August on the Kennebunk Plains (it is August everywhere of course) and August on the sand plains means Blazing Star. This endangered member of the aster family has a stronghold on the Kennebunk Plains and I always feel privileged to live as close as I do. I photograph the bloom every year. As usual, I will be traveling at the height of the season, so I went out to the plains yesterday to see if I could catch the early bloom. And indeed a few pioneer plants were showing full color. And such color!
Sony HX400V. 85mm equivalent field of view. Macro. ISO 80 @ 1/800th @ f4. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Beach Heather
For some reason I have found Beach Heather very difficult to photograph. It is a scraggly plant at the best of times, attractive from the near distance as a purple haze at the edge of the dunes and marsh…an effect that is next to impossible to capture…or attractive very close up for its tiny flowers and lovely color…which can also be very hard to photograph since the slender stems keep the plant moving in the most gentle breeze. And between those extremes it has little to recommend it. Scraggle at the sandy edges. 🙂
This shot with its one sharp blossom surrounded by a net of unfocused color is as close as I have come. If you are not familiar with Heather, that flower is truly tiny…less than a centimeter across. Sony HX400V. 85mm equivalent macro. ISO 80 @ 1/400th @ f4. Superior Auto. Processed in Handy Photo on my tablet.
Nasturtium: Happy Sunday!
Just walking around the yard with a new camera I could not resist this fresh Nasturtium with its amazing internal architecture and the two drops of water left from the rain of the night before. And the color of course.
Sony HX400V. 60mm macro equivalent. ISO 80 @ 1/100th @ f3.5. Superior Auto. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought: I am playing with a new camera. I was about to spend $1500 on two lenses, either one of which would have been more expensive than any single photographic implement I have ever bought before, and which would have brought my field kit to two bodies and three lenses…three bodies and three lenses for maximum flexibility. It is all the most compact gear I could find: what they are calling mirror-less compact system cameras, but it was still approaching 15 pounds of equipment in at least two camera bags. And I thought: “Whoa! This is just not who I am!” I love photography, but honestly, for what I do…mostly blogging and posting on Facebook and Google+…15 pounds and $2500 worth of gear is simply way more than I need (or want to carry on a regular basis). And then too, I think of myself as an evangelist for wildlife and nature, and wildlife and nature photography…I would like to see lots more people learning to celebrate the wonder of God’s creation with a camera in hand…and that kind of equipment is a barrier for many of the people who could most benefit from a close look at nature. It becomes too easy for others to say, “Yeah, of course your pics are great. You got all that expensive stuff!” Or, perhaps, “Me, I am not even going to try if I have to spend that much, and carry all that stuff.” I do want to be the everyman’s (and everywoman’s) champion of wildlife and nature photography. It is my niche, and honestly, I had fallen out of it. 🙂
So I canceled the order for the two lenses (though they are undoubtedly the best lenses I have ever used), and went back to using my Canon SX50HS superzoom…just to see if I could still enjoy it after my months in the “real camera” camp. And I found that I could. I have always said the best camera to have is the one you have with you when you see the picture. Still, the Canon is aging and due for an update. It lacks many of the refinements of the past two years, so I did a few day’s research, and bought another under $500 superzoom (which I actually got from Amazon Warehouse Deals for about $350). One camera, the Sony HX400V, to, hopefully, replace three bodies and three lenses. That is a lot to ask, more now that I know exactly what the larger cameras can do, and I know there will be compromises. But then I always knew there were compromises with superzooms.
I am still in the pixel peeping stage of new camera ownership…looking for the flaws in every image while I learn what the new camera can (and can’t) do. I am not certain if the Sony is the superzoom I will end up using, but I am already sure that I have refound my niche. Which is the same as saying I have returned to myself…to that person who most fully expresses my spirit, that bit of the one creative spirit the Creator has gifted me with. And this is good. I will get over peeping at pixels, and go back to simply enjoying and celebrating wonder with a camera. Like the amazing beautiful internal architecture of
nasturtiums.
Ruined Beauty
The Rose is blown and by. And yet still beautiful. A wreck of a Rose. And yet it still draws the eye and awakes the soul. Okay, so maybe that last is a bit over the top :-), but I certainly see an attraction. Form, color, texture. And a hint of nostalgia to knit it all together emotionally. This is from our yard yesterday morning after a day of thunderstorms.
Canon SX50HS. 24mm plus 1.5x Digital tel-extenter for a super-macro. ISO 100 @ 1/160th @ f4. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Obtrusive power-lines in the upper right corner retouched out using the eraser tool in Handy Photo.
Spotted Orange Jewelweed
According to a little Web research this morning, Orange Jewelweed is an introduced species in North America. It is also called Touch-me-not and is actually an Impatiens. It is often used as a natural cure for skin rashes and poison ivy in particular. I found these specimens growing by the small Pond at the Kennebunkport Land Conservancy headquarters at Emmons Preserve.
Sony Alpha NEX 5T with ZEISS Touit 50mm macro. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Yellow-jacket on Lantana
You do not see a lot of Lantana growing in Maine. It is a plant I associate with the Southwest and southern California where it is popular in Gardens for its bold color and for its attractiveness to butterflies. At the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens they had it growing in huge planters which I assume they move inside during the winter. I stopped for a macro of the flowers. The Yellow-jacket (Common Wasp) is a bonus.
Sony Alpha NEX 3N with ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. ISO 200 @ 1/320th @ f11. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Anyone who appreciates macros would have to love this lens!
Hoverfly in Grass Pink Orchid
Last Thursday I attended a program on dragonflies and butterflies at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve at Laudholm Farm in Wells, Maine. We netted a few interesting moths and butterflies…including a Snowberry Clearwing Moth…and after the program I wandered down to the boardwalk through the mini-bog that my wife Carol discovered earlier this summer. I had gotten good photos of the Grass Pink Orchids there earlier in the week, but I wanted to try for better shots of the Pink Pagonia, the other common bog orchid in Southern Maine. Still I could not resist a few more shots of Grass Pink…especially when I caught this Hoverfly visiting. There seem to be several species of Hoverfly here in Southern Maine…or else the species is very variable in size. I see all sizes, from very tiny (smaller than this one), to big brutes that over in openings and over trails in the forest 2/3rs the size of a Bumble Bee.
Sony Alpha NEX 5T with the ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. Aperture preferred at f11 for depth of field. 1/250th @ ISO 100. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped slightly for scale and composition.
Deadly Embrace: Spider and the fly.
Flower Crab Spider with Deer Fly
This is a Flower Crab Spider with what appears to be some kind of Deer Fly. The Flower Crab Spider sits on white or yellow flowers (it is white on a white flower, but slowly turns more yellow on yellow flowers) and waits for other insects to visit. Then it pounces. Here it is on Yarrow. I very nearly walked right by this little drama along side the Kennebunk Bridle Path. In fact I am not sure what caught my eye. I took a few shots with the 75-300mm zoom and then switched to the Sony NEX 5T and ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. The spider is less than 1/4 inch long.
ISO 100 @ 1/640th @ f9. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Grass Pink, bog orchid
A collage of Grass Pink from the bog at Laudholm Farms
Grass Pink certainly got shortchanged by the naming department! This little bog orchid, which I found growing in abundance along with the more common Pink Pagonia, in the tiny section of bog at the Wells Reserve at Laudholm Farm, should be called Purple Pulpit Flower, or Yellow Bearded Purple Bog Orchid, or certainly something much more grand than “Grass Pink” . I mean! Look at it! Anyone passing out names should be impressed. I certainly am. Bad day in the naming department, is all I have to say!
Again this panel is a mix of telephoto macros at the long end of the 600mm equivalent zoom on my Olympus OM-D E-M10, and true macros with the ZEISS Touit 50mm macro on the Sony NEX 5T. There is indeed, some variation in the purple/pink color of the blooms. A volunteer at the Reserve, who we happened to meet on the bog boardwalk, suggested that it had to do with how long the blossom had been out. She speculated that they fade in the sun. Could be. We saw a few that were definitely pink…but most were shades of purple.
As above: Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom and Sony NEX 5T with ZEISS Touit 50mm f2.8 macro. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Panel assembled in Pixlr Express.