52795 Round-leaved Sundew
Round-leaved Sundew in bog with partially digested ant, Cypress Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. For this ultra-close shot of a carnivorous plant, I reverse mounted a 24mm lens on my film camera. This produced an extreme closeup. It came with drawbacks, though. With the lens backwards (I still have the old adapter ring that allowed me to do this) the automatic aperture stopdown function ceased to be. Therefore whatever f-stop I would set would be the one I was looking through (rather than viewing through a wide open aperture that stops down the instant the shutter release is pressed). At f/22, this meant a very dark view. Furthermore, the stopped down lens would fool the camera's meter, so I had to figure out exposure through trial and error.
Once I got a handle on these problems, however, the results could be stunning. Images were incredibly sharp, and the magnification was much greater than I could achieve with my macro lens. For this image I recall lying in a bog, finally emerging wet and boggy, but very happy. Then I had to run down to the Kodak lab in North Vancouver, and wait a day or two for processing. Those were the days!
Scanned from the original Kodachrome 64 slide, June 1991.
Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© All rights reserved
52795 Round-leaved Sundew
Round-leaved Sundew in bog with partially digested ant, Cypress Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. For this ultra-close shot of a carnivorous plant, I reverse mounted a 24mm lens on my film camera. This produced an extreme closeup. It came with drawbacks, though. With the lens backwards (I still have the old adapter ring that allowed me to do this) the automatic aperture stopdown function ceased to be. Therefore whatever f-stop I would set would be the one I was looking through (rather than viewing through a wide open aperture that stops down the instant the shutter release is pressed). At f/22, this meant a very dark view. Furthermore, the stopped down lens would fool the camera's meter, so I had to figure out exposure through trial and error.
Once I got a handle on these problems, however, the results could be stunning. Images were incredibly sharp, and the magnification was much greater than I could achieve with my macro lens. For this image I recall lying in a bog, finally emerging wet and boggy, but very happy. Then I had to run down to the Kodak lab in North Vancouver, and wait a day or two for processing. Those were the days!
Scanned from the original Kodachrome 64 slide, June 1991.
Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.
© All rights reserved