Asiatic Day Flower anther
I was getting ready to mow my lawn and as usual, walked around looking for interesting subjects to shoot before the mower chewed everything to bits. There were a number of soon-to-be-obliterated Asiatic Day Flowers scattered around so I picked one, figuring I could get some close-up pix of the anthers. I had rigged my D40 with a new supplementary lens and wanted to see if it was worth using with my macro bracket.
The flower was held in my left hand, which was braced against the macro bracket. Focusing was done simply by moving the flower toward or away from the lens and shooting when it passed through the focus "sweet spot". While getting pix of another part of the flower, I noticed something red streak across the field of view. It was a tiny mite, and by moving the flower I was able to follow it as it raced around, finally settling on the anthers. It spent some time behaving much like a bee, slurping up something it found on them. This thing was extremely active, only remaining still for a split second... not much time to center it in the viewfinder and float around looking for the point of sharpest focus. So... I just fired away, figuring that maybe several images might be OK. After 15 minutes of cursing at the wind, cursing at the mite... who kept running around, and cursing at my cramping arm holding the camera, I came away with three images that are "OK" but not great.
The lens is a Nikon industrial 20x Objective that I think was part of a huge tool maker or measuring microscope. The lens is about 4" long and has unusual mongrel threads that fit none of my regular adapters. It and three other objectives (10, 50, 100x) came as part of a lens "turret" that looked very much like a traditional multi-objective microscope rotating turret, but made of heavy steel. Because of its huge size... about 14" across, it weighed around 25 pounds. With all the objectives in place it resembled half of a WW1 floating mine. The lens was mounted on the outboard end of a short bellows from a Spiratone Bello-Dupliscope slide copier after first removing the slide holder. Then the unit was mounted on the D40 using a modified screw mount to Nikon F adapter. The lens has no aperture control, so you just shoot and regulate exposure via ISO and flash power adjustment. It's impossible to see anything in the viewfinder because of the very small (unknown) aperture, so a small LED flashlight is mounted on the bellows and pre-aimed to light up whatever enters the zone of sharpest focus. Depth of Field is VERY thin... somewhere around .25mm. The pop-up flash on the D40 is dead, so lighting was provided by a Nikon SB-20 flash, set at 1/16th power. The D40 shutter will flash-synch to 1/4000 second when using an external flash, so I used 1/2000 and 1/16 power to minimize the effect of camera and subject motion. Here's a photo of the set-up:
www.flickr.com/photos/61377404@N08/15461786609/in/album-7...
DSC-3860
Asiatic Day Flower anther
I was getting ready to mow my lawn and as usual, walked around looking for interesting subjects to shoot before the mower chewed everything to bits. There were a number of soon-to-be-obliterated Asiatic Day Flowers scattered around so I picked one, figuring I could get some close-up pix of the anthers. I had rigged my D40 with a new supplementary lens and wanted to see if it was worth using with my macro bracket.
The flower was held in my left hand, which was braced against the macro bracket. Focusing was done simply by moving the flower toward or away from the lens and shooting when it passed through the focus "sweet spot". While getting pix of another part of the flower, I noticed something red streak across the field of view. It was a tiny mite, and by moving the flower I was able to follow it as it raced around, finally settling on the anthers. It spent some time behaving much like a bee, slurping up something it found on them. This thing was extremely active, only remaining still for a split second... not much time to center it in the viewfinder and float around looking for the point of sharpest focus. So... I just fired away, figuring that maybe several images might be OK. After 15 minutes of cursing at the wind, cursing at the mite... who kept running around, and cursing at my cramping arm holding the camera, I came away with three images that are "OK" but not great.
The lens is a Nikon industrial 20x Objective that I think was part of a huge tool maker or measuring microscope. The lens is about 4" long and has unusual mongrel threads that fit none of my regular adapters. It and three other objectives (10, 50, 100x) came as part of a lens "turret" that looked very much like a traditional multi-objective microscope rotating turret, but made of heavy steel. Because of its huge size... about 14" across, it weighed around 25 pounds. With all the objectives in place it resembled half of a WW1 floating mine. The lens was mounted on the outboard end of a short bellows from a Spiratone Bello-Dupliscope slide copier after first removing the slide holder. Then the unit was mounted on the D40 using a modified screw mount to Nikon F adapter. The lens has no aperture control, so you just shoot and regulate exposure via ISO and flash power adjustment. It's impossible to see anything in the viewfinder because of the very small (unknown) aperture, so a small LED flashlight is mounted on the bellows and pre-aimed to light up whatever enters the zone of sharpest focus. Depth of Field is VERY thin... somewhere around .25mm. The pop-up flash on the D40 is dead, so lighting was provided by a Nikon SB-20 flash, set at 1/16th power. The D40 shutter will flash-synch to 1/4000 second when using an external flash, so I used 1/2000 and 1/16 power to minimize the effect of camera and subject motion. Here's a photo of the set-up:
www.flickr.com/photos/61377404@N08/15461786609/in/album-7...
DSC-3860