Posts Tagged Macro Kit
October 6, 2010 – Hibiscus Flowers
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on October 6, 2010
Hibiscus Flowers
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1726
So there’s been a decent-sized increase in interest in the pictures I took in Jamaica recently. (The increase in interest is recent, the pictures from Jamaica are.. well, they’re also recent. But.. less recent. I was talking about the interest.) Not among, you know, “real people” per se, but among people that I work with. And my mother in law. On the one hand, it’s a little bit frustrating, because most of the pictures I take are NOT from Jamaica, and nobody cares as much about those. But, on the other hand, it’s making me realize that I should really sit down and go through those pictures. So far, I’ve only grabbed one here or there, but I haven’t yet dug through the whole pile to grab anything that’s interesting. Don’t get your hopes up or anything, I feel like I’ve already posted the best ones, so what’s left will just fill out the middle of the pack a bit. But, they’re still worth posting here.
In the meantime, here’s another one I happened to have lying around. It’s another shot of the hibiscus flowers that were so prevalent around the area(s) of Negril where we stayed. Hibiscus flowers are weird. They’re pretty, and have a lot of character, but they’re kind of hard to take interesting pictures of. That middle part can be really… droopy.. And it’s pretty long too, which can make it hard to get both the tip and the body both in focus, if that’s your thing. (And yes, I’m really going out of my way here to keep it clean. ) But the color is really fantastic, and there’s a lot of nice detail in there, so if you get one to turn out, it can be pretty cool.
Speaking of interest, by the way, I should mention that I can make prints of just about any of the pictures you see me post. And they’re cheap, since I get them printed at Costco. A 12×18 print is only 3 bucks, and a 20×30 is only about 10. Recently, I got one of my pictures printed on canvas, at 20×30, and it looked FANTASTIC. It was mounted on a wooden frame, so it was ready to hang. That came out to about 100 dollars, shipped. So, a few folks that I know are asking for prints here or there. If you want to get in on that action, definitely let me know.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm lens, and I think I used a little screw-on “macro lens” attachment for this guy. 1/250s, f/5.6, ISO 800. Focal length: 33mm.
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June 29, 2010 – Hibiscus Flower
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day, Tropical/Beaches on June 29, 2010
Hibiscus Flower, Jamaica
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1602
So as long as we’re on a Jamaican kick, I may as well keep it going. This is yet another shot that I got when I was in Jamaica earlier this year. This is a hibiscus flower. Or, this is *an* hibiscus flower. Normally, I tend to be one of those obnoxious folks that’s always snarkily pointing out glaring grammatical flaws. (My two personal favorites are using an apostrophe to pluralize a word (using apostrophe’s to pluralize your word’s), and using “less” instead of “fewer”. God I hate that.) But, in this particular case, I don’t know how I feel about it. I mean, I KNOW that you’re supposed to use “an” with words that start with h. But I just don’t buy it. It doesn’t feel natural. H is a consonant. It sounds like a consonant (most of the time, anyway). So why should we treat it like a vowel. Grrr, it eats me up inside.
Anyway, right, hibiscus. Cool, right? Yeah. I took this one with my ordinary walk-around lens (Tamron 17-50), but I used a cheap set of diopters aka macro lenses aka “a macro kit”. Basically, a couple little magnifying lenses that you screw on the end of your lens like a filter, that magnify the subject and let you focus closer. They’re a great way to dip your feet into macro photography, because they’re cheap. I mean, sure, if you’re a Canon purist, you can of course find a way to spend hundreds of dollars on one. But you don’t HAVE to, you can get an off brand (I have a set from Hoya and a set from Opteka. Different sizes, to fit different lenses, that’s why I have two) and only spend 20 or 30 bucks. I read a blog once from a guy that spent WEEKS researching which way to go, and eventually he decided to get the cheap ones, and he was just AMAZINGLY disappointed. He actually went so far to include the words “BIG MISTAKE” in his blog post. Yeah, that’s total crap. They’re not that bad. And besides, you spent 20 bucks on the goddamn things, how big of a mistake could it have really been? For things that are cheap like that, there’s no reason NOT to try them out. Sure, they may not be fantastic, but you may be surprised, and regardless, you’re only out like 20 bucks. Personally, I’m pretty happy with the cheapie cheaps. Sure, they’ve got their limitations, but as long as you realize that, you can work with it, and you can do some cool stuff.
Okay, rant over. Sorry I missed yesterday. I may also miss tomorrow, just sayin’.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens with Opteka macro kit. 1/1000s, f/4.5, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 15%
March 3, 2010 – Pollination
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on March 3, 2010
Insect and Flower
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=985
Whoa, not sure what happened there, I completely missed yesterday. I guess I was just.. kind of busy, so I sort of.. completely forgot to post a picture. Sorry about that! I’d say “I won’t let it happen again”, but obviously I will.
I realized today that it’s been almost a month and a half since I posted a picture of a bug. How could I let this happen?? Clearly, I had to remedy that situation immediately. I don’t really know what kind of bug this is (my first guess is always “bee”, but that’s based only on the fact that it’s standing on a flower, so clearly I’m not the authority), but it was willing to hang around for pictures, so it hardly matters.
As I’ve mentioned in the past, taking pictures of bugs like this is purely an exercise in patience. Obviously, they move. A LOT. Also, you’re dealing with microscopic depths of field, so if you tend to sway back and forth when you take pictures like I do, you might think you got the perfect shot only to find out later that you accidentally got the hindquarters of the bug in focus instead of it’s head. Depending on what macro method you’re using – as in, super-expensive-macro-lens, ordinary macro lens, macro kit (like this one), reverse-mounted lens, etc – you may get a larger or smaller depth of field, but it’ll always be super small. So, to counter both of those issues, you end up just needing to take a TON of shots, and hopefully a handful of them will turn out okay. (When I got this picture, for example, I took about 40 frames, and got 5 or 6 that were decent enough to hold on to.) So don’t get discouraged, just keep shooting, and be ready to dig through piles and piles of crappy ones to get what you want.
Notes: Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 109mm.
Popularity: 11%
February 17, 2010 – Strange Vine revisited
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day on February 17, 2010
Strange vine revisited
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1030
Hey again everyone, sorry for the late post today. It’s been a tough day trying to catch up on everything that I missed from yesterday (the hockey game was AWESOME! Maybe I’ll make a special post sometime with some of the results from me playing sports photographer for the day), so I’m only getting a chance to post something now. I promise, tomorrow we’ll be back on our regular schedule.
This is another take on the crazy curly vine thing that you last saw back in December. To sort of paraphrase what I said about it back then: I don’t know what it is, but I thought it was kind of cool looking. So, I took a picture. Actually, I took a lot of pictures. But this may be the last picture of it you see. Maybe not, we’ll see how I feel in April.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/250s, f/4.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 35mm.
Popularity: 5%
February 1, 2010 – Salal Bush
Posted by Dave in Fall Color, Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on February 1, 2010
Salal Bush
Monday, February 1, 2010
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=983
Hey everyone, welcome back! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Mine was not too bad. I spent a surprisingly large amount of time out in the snow (skiing one day, snowshoeing the next), hoping to get a decent number of potd-worthy shots. Sadly, I wasn’t as successful as I was hoping. I got a couple that have potential, we’ll see how they turn out when I look at them on the big screen.
In the meantime, here’s a picture of a salal bush from this fall. I actually had no idea what a salal bush was, but it had these little berries that were EVERYWHERE, so I asked somebody what they were, and that’s what they said. This shot (obviously) doesn’t have any berries in it, but it’s from the same bush. Mostly it’s only here because I was playing around with my macro kit (that little set of magnifying glass type things that you put on your lens like a filter), and it was handy. But as you can see, they really do work as advertised, and they can be a lot of fun to play around with. I’d post a link here to Amazon like usual, but I’ve done that a lot of times before and nobody’s every bought one. I’m feeling a bit lazy today, so I’m going to leave out that little detail.
I’ve decided that Tuesday and Thursday this week I’m going to toss up some crappy pictures just to get them out of the way, so don’t get your hopes up too much for those. I’ll try to put up something reasonably interesting on Wednesday, and I’ve got a nice one picked out for Friday. I don’t really know why I feel like Friday is the day to post nice ones, but I’ve kind of settled on that. So whatever. See you tomorrow!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya macro kit. 1/400s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 30mm.
Popularity: 10%
December 23, 2009 – Rose
Posted by Dave in - Best of Dave's POTD -, Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on December 23, 2009
Rose
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1106
Yeah, I know, I know, I promised either a baby ostrich or a barbed wire fence today. Or at least something keeping with the theme of using only crappy and/or weird pictures this week while “nobody was around to read the blog”. Well, I couldn’t do it today. Because, you see, this is the last post until sometime next week. Which means, all of the random folks that land on this page between now and then will see *today’s* post as their first and most likely *only* impression of me. So I had to make it a good one, right? Don’t worry, you’ll get to see at least one of the mediocre pictures that you want next week.
Today’s shot is another one taken with a macro kit, basically a set of magnifying glass type things that you screw onto the front of your lens. But this was a somewhat different set up than you’ve seen before, because this was taken with a lens that I bought at the end of the summer, a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, and because it takes a different size of filter than the lens I formerly used with my macro kit, a brand new macro kit. But it’s the same idea.
The macro kits do work as advertised, allowing you to focus more closely and get further in than you would be able to otherwise. But they can also add sort of a hazy, dreamy feel to the pictures (particularly at the far end of your zoom), which may or may not help the picture. This picture is a perfect example. It looks like it’s been extensively photoshopped, but in reality I only did minimal post-processing on it. If I had the original handy, I’d post it here as well so you could see. Perhaps I’ll do that later. Definitely a great toy to play around with, and it can definitely get you some really interesting images that you wouldn’t get otherwise. But it’s also definitely not something you want to keep on your lens all the time.
Okay, that’s it for this week. Have a great holiday if you’re in to that sort of thing!
Popularity: 11%
December 21, 2009 – Strange Vine
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on December 21, 2009
Strange Vine
Monday, December 21, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1033
Welcome back everyone! As you can tell by the very fact that I did indeed post something today, my traffic looks to be improved. Still not sure what happened at the end of the last week, but it sure seemed like most of you decided to go outside and play instead of sitting inside reading my stuff like you should. But since I did kind of already mentally check out for the holidays, I’ve decided to compromise, and use this week and next week (I’ll probably only post 2 or 3 times next week) to post some pictures from the backlog that are either not really that great, or just.. kind of weird.
This one definitely falls into the weird category. I saw this vine thing on a hike one day (I’m not going to say which one, due to my aforementioned hesitation at admitting to yet another picture from the Shi Shi Beach trail – although to be fair, it’s been a month since I posted one. Well, posted one that I actually identified as being from that hike anyway.) I thought it was really cool how those two strands danced and curled around each other, but the resulting pictures were still a bit weird. As in, I felt like when I looked at the picture I started by noticing the cool, playful pattern, but then right at that moment where you’d say “Oh, cool, that’s a [whatever]! Awesome!” I instead found myself saying “Oh, cool, that’s a …. umm… uhh.. what the hell is that?”. So it felt like it had a great build up, but then a crappy, poorly thought out, meaningless ending. But this and the other couple of pictures I got of this.. thing.. are both somewhat interesting photos in my opinion, so it fit perfectly with this week’s theme. (Oh, we’re doing weekly themes now, are we?)
So, there it is. Be sure to check back tomorrow to see what crappy and/or weird picture I decide to use to take up the dead-space between now and the end of the year!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/250s, f/5.0, ISO 800. Focal length: 50mm.
Popularity: 9%
December 17, 2009 – Insect and Flower
Posted by Dave in Macro, Picture of the Day, Washington State on December 17, 2009
Insect and Flower
Thursday, December 17, 2009
http://www.davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=986
See? A bug and a flower, just like I said. Man, I’m really good at predicting stuff. It’s almost like my today self somehow sent a message back through time to my yesterday self saying exactly which picture would be posted. Almost eerie, really.
Those of you who were with me earlier this year, you know that this summer I went on a mini-odyssey of sorts, exploring several different cheapskate methods of macro photography. The extreme case was of course the reverse-mount adapter that I used to get that picture of the fly a few days ago. That one, while extremely powerful, is also extremely difficult to use. Today’s solution, while it won’t get you nearly as close, is in a lot of ways more pleasant to use. It’s a Macro Kit, which consists of a set of these magnifying-lens type filters that you attach to the front of your lens. They magnify a bit and allow you to focus more closely than you would be able to otherwise. So they get you closer than you would be able to otherwise, but with a whole new set of limitations. (Your depth of field is very small as you would expect, although not as drastic as with the reverse-mount. Also, the area outside of the in-focus range gets blurry in a weird way. I guess I’d describe it by saying it gets “foggy” rather than “blurry”. And, the longer your focal length (distance from the front of your lens to your sensor) the foggier it gets, to the point where, if you’re using a superzoom lens, and your lens is way extended, the whole frame will be foggy, even the stuff that’s in focus. It’s weird, really.)
As with any accessory though, they are well worth playing around with, despite their limitations, especially given their really low price (20-30 bucks.) Again, you’ll definitely get better results with a true macro lens, but you’ll also be paying a heck of a lot more than most of us can afford to spend on such a niche-use lens. So, if macro seems fun (it totally is), go buy one, using that link above, so that I get a kickback from Amazon. We all win! Woooo!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya Macro Kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 200. Focal length: 168mm.
Popularity: 7%
September 28, 2009 – Rose
Posted by Dave in Flowers, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 28, 2009
Rose
Monday, September 28, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1103
I mentioned that I had a whole bunch of these, right? Yeah, I wasn’t kidding, really.
Actually, to be perfectly straight with you, I didn’t have this one until this weekend, it was not a part of the previous pile. I just added to it a bit. In the interim, I actually made a couple more changes to my equipment. I went ahead and made a decision on my overall lens strategy. You of course all remember that for the past couple of years, I’ve been exclusively using a Tamron 28-300 (actually, two Tamron 28-300′s, one without image stabilization, then later, one with – Amazon links here: http://bit.ly/vuRVr , http://bit.ly/vShrg ), but earlier this year I decided that using a super-zoom meant I was making some sacrifices in image quality. That sent me on a quest to figure out what lenses I really wanted to use moving forward.
First, I filled out the wide-angle part of the range. I rented a Canon 10-22 (Amazon: http://bit.ly/1GhCtc ) just to make sure I wanted one, then I picked up a Tokina 11-16 based on the recommendations of the guys at the camera shop. (Amazon: http://bit.ly/166NGM ). But that still left me with the meat of the problem: what to do about the mid range, where, let’s be honest, most of us take most of our pictures. My lens budget was already running a bit thin (okay, it was way past thin), so I figured this one would be a challenge. But it turns out Tamron makes a couple great lenses to fill that need, a 17-50, and a 28-75 (Amazon: http://bit.ly/z7D8t ) that I ended up going with. So far I’m really happy with it, and it’s actually more versatile that I was expecting. (I was expecting that I would constantly find myself wanting to swap out to my old 70-300 mm telephoto that I’ve sadly had to start carrying to fill out the range, but I’ve found that the 75mm end gets me just far enough in that I don’t really feel the need for more except in rare circumstances.)
Today’s picture was actually taken with that lens, paired with an Opteka macro kit, which is the same thing as the Hoya macro kit that I’ve been talking about for awhile now, except a different size, to fit the new lens. Good stuff all around.
By the way, I keep posting those Amazon links because if you actually use them and then buy something (I don’t think it even has to be the thing you clicked through to), I get 4%, which as I mentioned awhile back, is only 96% away from being totally sweet. So far none of you have bought anything, but I’m still holding out hope. 
That’s it! Enjoy the crazy fall weather that seems to be rolling in everywhere!
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens w/ Opteka Macro Kit. 1/500s, f/6.3, ISO 100. Focal length: 75mm.
Popularity: 4%
September 15, 2009 – Spider
Posted by Dave in Animals, Macro, Picture of the Day on September 15, 2009
Spider
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
http://davefry.net/rate/index.php?viewimage=1063
I’ll be the first to admit. Today’s picture is creeeeeepy. It’s bad enough when you see a spider at normal size. You start imagining what it would be like to have it crawling slowly up your arm and.. ugh, shivers. But now, you can add a little bit of detail to your vivid imaginings. Just imagine all of those little spindly things on its legs gently brushing against your skin. Those 15 or whatever little eyeballs checking you out. Yummy.
This little guy was backlit when I took the picture, that’s why he looks like he’s glowing. I was using the Hoya Macro Kit (Link to Amazon: http://bit.ly/2l96oL ), rather than the reverse mount lens, because that’s what I had on me at the time. It works great for most purposes, but if you’re using a big telephoto lens, as I was, and it’s at the zoomed-in side, and thus extended way out, you sort of get that weird glowy fogginess that you can kind of see. Not necessarily a bad thing, it is what it is. And, I suppose I should mention that I did cheat a tiny bit: when I took the picture, he was actually upside-down. So I rotated him right around, because I felt like I was allowed.
So, sorry in advance for any nightmares or additional reliance on other people to take care of spiders that you find in your living space. I’m sure you’ll get over it eventually.
Notes: Canon EOS Rebel T1i, Tamron 28-300 mm lens with Hoya macro kit. 1/200s, f/5.6, ISO 400. Focal length: 183mm.
Popularity: 5%