M38A1
Admin
So I've have this Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens for a bunch of years and never really thought much of it. It's a great prime 105mm lens is about all I've thought of it. With that lens mounted to either a crop or FF body, I just had such a stand-off distance between me and 'bugs', a huge crop was always necessary and it just didn't work for me. I did the research and even Rusty chimed in with some good pointers about shooting it. But it never came around. Specs said 12" minimum focus distance so I got out a tape measure and every way I tried, it was 18". So I tried the crop body (12"+50% would be 18") and same thing, 17-18" away. Specs also say it's a 1:1 ratio which I really didn't understand. So when you're that far away, even medium to large bugs need a huge crop. No bueno.
Fast forward to a week ago and I dropped in to see what a good friend of mine was doing on her Happiness Hour zoom thing every Wednesday night. I met Linda at ROT years ago when she came up to me and said "nice lens". The friendship started there, and she is a truly gifted photographer. In addition to that, she has cultivated a huge photographer network to both teach/participate in these Wednesday evening get-togethers, and has worked tirelessly with David Valdez (Bush 1 chief white house photographer who lives in Georgetown) to build the Georgetown Photo Festival.
So watching last week, she opens the zoom up and people start filtering in. She chats us all up, asks questions and requests we all put in our websites/IG accounts on the side bar. After hearing some banter back and forth, one gal - Mika - was talking about her macro bug shots so I stalked her website. Man, I found my teacher and she's local! The zoom meeting went well with the presentation speaker and afterwards I sent Mika an email asking if she'd be up for teaching me how to shoot macro. "Sure" was the reply.
With that, we agreed this morning would be great. Yesterday I had lunch with Rusty (Woodbutcher) and told him of this and he expressed interest so was going to join us today. And another mutual friend of Mika and Rusty was also invited. So the four of us met at Berry Springs park in Georgetown to 'shoot small stuff'. Right off the bat there was a nice area of bluebonnets and a few other flower types. I had my 105mm mounted to the FullFrame body and popped off a few shots with the same results. Exposure was awesome as the day was super sunny, but man those bees were TinyTinyTiny in the overall image. Here's one of the first shots with zero crop.
And here's with a fairly substantial crop just to get the bee in there so you know what you're looking at.
I showed Mika on the back of the screen and she asked what my minimum focal distance and lens ratio was. Told her 12" and 1:1. She asked how I was shooting the lens and I told her continuous mode auto focus, floating ISO, 1/250, f/8. She said "hey, try turning off your auto-focus and manually focus". Um.... ok. Well, no real change so she asked to look at the lens and said "spin the focus barrel to that 1:1 mark and focus with your feet". Well, I framed an image of another bee and had to move in closer, and closer and closer and closer..... DOH! Now the end of my lens is 2-3" from the subject and fills the frame! (insert lightbulb going off in my head). That one little trick yielded this one of the same bees in the same area with very little crop to remove distractions. I still can't figure out if that's the bees tongue/proboscis on it's head pushing pollen around. That sure wasn't in any of the flowers I saw... Now mind you, the end of my camera lens is only 2-3" from the subject so stealth isn't really an option. And with that razor thin DOF and any wind, you can see I need more work on trying to shoot this.
So with that we're off to the races so to speak...
Here's a couple dragonflies:
While we were wandering around the little pond I noticed this guy. Not sure what type he is, but Rusty and I both thought he was dead with that cloudy eye. That or he was just getting ready to shed. We made some noise and he slithered away so it wasn't dead.
Then we found a different spot and I captured these two. The first is an assassin bug and the next is a mating pair of dragonflies.
So what I came away from this experience is know what your gear is capable of doing by finding out capable people to teach you! Next up will be continuing to find small stuff and see what I can create. Then I'll probably try to migrate into using flash with this type of shooting.
Hope you enjoyed my morning outing with Rusty and a couple new friends.
.
Fast forward to a week ago and I dropped in to see what a good friend of mine was doing on her Happiness Hour zoom thing every Wednesday night. I met Linda at ROT years ago when she came up to me and said "nice lens". The friendship started there, and she is a truly gifted photographer. In addition to that, she has cultivated a huge photographer network to both teach/participate in these Wednesday evening get-togethers, and has worked tirelessly with David Valdez (Bush 1 chief white house photographer who lives in Georgetown) to build the Georgetown Photo Festival.
So watching last week, she opens the zoom up and people start filtering in. She chats us all up, asks questions and requests we all put in our websites/IG accounts on the side bar. After hearing some banter back and forth, one gal - Mika - was talking about her macro bug shots so I stalked her website. Man, I found my teacher and she's local! The zoom meeting went well with the presentation speaker and afterwards I sent Mika an email asking if she'd be up for teaching me how to shoot macro. "Sure" was the reply.
With that, we agreed this morning would be great. Yesterday I had lunch with Rusty (Woodbutcher) and told him of this and he expressed interest so was going to join us today. And another mutual friend of Mika and Rusty was also invited. So the four of us met at Berry Springs park in Georgetown to 'shoot small stuff'. Right off the bat there was a nice area of bluebonnets and a few other flower types. I had my 105mm mounted to the FullFrame body and popped off a few shots with the same results. Exposure was awesome as the day was super sunny, but man those bees were TinyTinyTiny in the overall image. Here's one of the first shots with zero crop.
And here's with a fairly substantial crop just to get the bee in there so you know what you're looking at.
I showed Mika on the back of the screen and she asked what my minimum focal distance and lens ratio was. Told her 12" and 1:1. She asked how I was shooting the lens and I told her continuous mode auto focus, floating ISO, 1/250, f/8. She said "hey, try turning off your auto-focus and manually focus". Um.... ok. Well, no real change so she asked to look at the lens and said "spin the focus barrel to that 1:1 mark and focus with your feet". Well, I framed an image of another bee and had to move in closer, and closer and closer and closer..... DOH! Now the end of my lens is 2-3" from the subject and fills the frame! (insert lightbulb going off in my head). That one little trick yielded this one of the same bees in the same area with very little crop to remove distractions. I still can't figure out if that's the bees tongue/proboscis on it's head pushing pollen around. That sure wasn't in any of the flowers I saw... Now mind you, the end of my camera lens is only 2-3" from the subject so stealth isn't really an option. And with that razor thin DOF and any wind, you can see I need more work on trying to shoot this.
So with that we're off to the races so to speak...
Here's a couple dragonflies:
While we were wandering around the little pond I noticed this guy. Not sure what type he is, but Rusty and I both thought he was dead with that cloudy eye. That or he was just getting ready to shed. We made some noise and he slithered away so it wasn't dead.
Then we found a different spot and I captured these two. The first is an assassin bug and the next is a mating pair of dragonflies.
So what I came away from this experience is know what your gear is capable of doing by finding out capable people to teach you! Next up will be continuing to find small stuff and see what I can create. Then I'll probably try to migrate into using flash with this type of shooting.
Hope you enjoyed my morning outing with Rusty and a couple new friends.
.