View allAll Photos Tagged macro
These are the last of my batch of macros, taken on a lunch break in work last week. This one was on a cherry tree.
Mamhilad park esate, Monmouthshire
Almost three years ago I posted about the fantasy of our Platonic perception of the world - you might want to watch this interesting TED talk for some insight into how it works in the brain.
If you look around yourself now, though... most probably you won't see aphids or any other macroscopic animal crawling around you (even though there's almost certainly a spider within a couple of meters from you...).
What about stuff you can't even see?
The new camera's super macro mode begs poking around at stuff, since the camera can clearly see what I can't. This is one of today's experiments, in super macro and pushing the focal length down to almost zero.
To the naked eye, this ball pen looks clean. In reality, it's filthy, all covered in stuff. (After seeing this onscreen, I looked again and, much as I tried, I couldn't see any of this gunk with my own eyes.)
There are mites that are smaller than those bits of junk on the ball pen. Those mites are huge compared to the bacteria and fungi they feed on...
When was the last time you put your pen (or pencil) in your mouth? ;)
(Bigger gets even better.)
___ MY _settings: for this artistic Macro and great DOF
AFPoint: Manual AF point selection
Canon Exposure Mode: Aperture-priority AE
Aperture: f/2.8
Image Stabilization: On, Shot Only
+
Exposure Mode: Auto bracket
White Balance: Manual
Quality: Superfine
-
amazing details;
waterdrops with reflecions of the Arboreum
for flickeritis members by DOF
-|> full ranged original - unretouched
There were several pairs of these Darter dragonflies mating on the pond. At one point a mating pair landed on my knee! I told them to get a hotel (actually I desperately tried to switch lenses before they moved).
The male hooks two spikes into the back of the female's head. They form a "wheel" at first, then they then fly around dipping the female into the water, presumably to lay eggs. I got a few shots of this dipping, but it was too blurry as they do it very fast. I mainly caught them as they came up from a dip and hovered briefly.
I shot this at ISO 1600 but pulled it back two stops in post-processing as it was overexposed.
Canon 40D, 300mm f4 IS, 1.4x converter
f/8, 1/320 sec, ISO 1600 (pulled back to ISO 400)