Violet Helleborine (Epipactis purpurata) in its beech woodland habitat
A test for my new Laowa 15mm 'macro' wide angle lens. This lens is Venus Optics' replacement for the true 1:1 15mm wide angle macro, and I am impressed with how much easier it is to use in the field. With the Nikon Z mount there are electrical contacts, allowing aperture to be set in camera and also focus peaking is possible. The earlier lens was larger, entirely manual and a devil to set the aperture (meaning a whole set of photos would need to be taken to 'bracket' the exposure). While this lens 'only' reproduces up to half life size on the sensor that's good enough in practice for anything other than springtails and small spiders etc. In any case, something that is often forgotten with wide angle macro is that if you have the lens so close to a tiny subject that it is at maximum reproduction of 1:1 then the background will be almost entirely blurred, despite its wide angle capability, which negates the entire point of the lens! The ideal distance between the lens and its subject is around 15-30cm, which should allow a good sense of the context/habitat of the organism. I should have used a fill-in flash here, but that's entirely my mistake and not that of the lens. I can see myself using it far more regularly than the previous iteration of the Laowa wide angle macro. In many ways this lens allows the opposite effect that most macro photographs strive for, ie isolation of the subject from its background, in the case of the wide angle macro, we want it almost to achieve the impossible - a sharp image of a tiny subject and a clear view of its surroundings!
Violet Helleborine (Epipactis purpurata) in its beech woodland habitat
A test for my new Laowa 15mm 'macro' wide angle lens. This lens is Venus Optics' replacement for the true 1:1 15mm wide angle macro, and I am impressed with how much easier it is to use in the field. With the Nikon Z mount there are electrical contacts, allowing aperture to be set in camera and also focus peaking is possible. The earlier lens was larger, entirely manual and a devil to set the aperture (meaning a whole set of photos would need to be taken to 'bracket' the exposure). While this lens 'only' reproduces up to half life size on the sensor that's good enough in practice for anything other than springtails and small spiders etc. In any case, something that is often forgotten with wide angle macro is that if you have the lens so close to a tiny subject that it is at maximum reproduction of 1:1 then the background will be almost entirely blurred, despite its wide angle capability, which negates the entire point of the lens! The ideal distance between the lens and its subject is around 15-30cm, which should allow a good sense of the context/habitat of the organism. I should have used a fill-in flash here, but that's entirely my mistake and not that of the lens. I can see myself using it far more regularly than the previous iteration of the Laowa wide angle macro. In many ways this lens allows the opposite effect that most macro photographs strive for, ie isolation of the subject from its background, in the case of the wide angle macro, we want it almost to achieve the impossible - a sharp image of a tiny subject and a clear view of its surroundings!