Rings

These are my wife's and my wedding rings and another ring. It's amazing how scratched up they get after only three and half years. There'll be nothing left by the time we're done with them!

A Plant Whose Name I Don't Know

Today's subject matter is a little prettier then last time.

Enjoy!

More Macro

As you may have guessed, you're probably going to be seeing a lot of macro work from me over the next little while. We're in the dead of winter now and it's cold outside, like really cold. So I don't think I'll be going out. Now that I can photograph smaller things, it's like my small house, and my photo opportunities, just got a whole lot bigger!

Here's my watch and a pen:

Macro Photography with Extension Tubes

I bought a set of extension tubes a little while ago. The purpose of an extension tube is to move the lens farther away from the camera. This allows you to focus on objects that are closer to the front of your lens making them great for macro photography. They do have a down side, though. You will lose your ability to focus to infinity. The longer the tube, both your minimum and maximum focus distances decrease, but that normally isn't a problem if you're taking pictures of bugs since you're always quite close. I can't wait until the bugs come out again!

They're quite simple. The set I got are made of metal. There's no glass in them. It came in 5 pieces: a mount for the camera body, a mount for the lens and three different sized rings that can screw into each other and the mounts. By combining different parts you can extend the space between the camera body and lens eight intervals.

This is definitely the cheapest way to get into macro photography. There are macro lenses, but they're quite expensive, of course. I was very surprised at how much the extension tubes varied in price. The set I got was about $11.00 on eBay including shipping from Hong-Kong. I checked out the Canon branded ones at a local camera shop and they were well over $200.00! Now there are some differences. The Canon set had electrical contacts so the auto-focus, aperture control, and Image Stabilization (IS) would still work and each part had a body and lens mount so they were much easier and faster to attach, but in the end they do the exact same thing. There would be absolutely no difference in image quality. Manually focusing isn't that hard and I can use a tripod so the loss of IS isn't a big deal, but the aperture control is a little more annoying since most lenses no longer have a manual aperture control, it can only be done electronically. So I have to mount the lens to the body, set the aperture I want and then remove the lens while pressing the aperture preview button since normally the aperture stays wide open until just before the shutter opens. Then, I mount the tube to the body and the lens to the tube and I'm ready to go. Still, I don't think it's worth $200+.

Often, in my previous post, my macro shots were cropped quite a lot, they would have looked terrible printed. No need for cropping here.

Anyhow, enough talk, how 'bout some pictures? The first one is a demonstration of just how close to your subject you can get, it's my thumb print on the front of the lens! You can't get much closer then that. Of course, this isn't always desirable. Being that close makes it hard to light, since the lens is in the way, like the pencil, which is leaning right up against the lens. Using longer lenses will allow you to get farther away.

Playing With Dominoes

My wife and I sat down for a game of Dominoes a while ago. It wasn't long before we were building towers and lining them up to knock them down again.

I thought these first two turned out interesting. They're both about a half second exposure with the flash set to fire on the 2nd curtain (right before the shutter closes). It's kind of like a before, during and after shot all at once.

Moon

Remember those blurry moon pictures from about a month ago? I tried some more moon shots with my new lens (EF-S 55-250mm) a little while ago and what a difference. I wish I had my new lens back then. Oh well.

Polarized Filter

I got a polarized filter for Christmas. For those who may not know what a polarized filter is or what it does, here are some examples.

There are many uses for polarized filters. Here are two:

1. Bring out the contrast between the sky and clouds
The first picture was taken without the filter. The second and third were taken with the filter, but with it rotated 90 degrees.




2. Reduce reflections or glare on glass, water, or anything wet or shiny. This is the reason many sunglasses are polarized. Note the reflections in the window. Both of the following pictures are with the filter, but with it rotated 90 degrees.



The only editing I did on these ones was scaling so they fit in this space. No colour adjustments.

Hawk

I went for a photo walk the other day looking for interesting photo op's, but didn't find much. I was on my way back to the car when I looked up in a tree and saw a hawk with his head turned around backwards staring right back at me. You don't see many hawks around where I live, so this was a treat. He didn't let me get very close before he flew away out of sight. Luckily, I was going to same way he was so we met up again later on, but I didn't see him until he flew away again. I was quick enough to get a few blurry shots.

Birds

I got a new lens for Chrismas!  It's a Canon EF-S 55-250 with Image Stableization.  I tested it out on some birds and a squirrel that liked to chase birds and hog all the seed for himself. I really like the first one, too bad he was looking away from the camera.  The Bluejay was taken looking sideways through a window, so it's not as clear. 

More Sunny Winter Day

Some random winter pictures.

Sunny Winter Day

After being inspired by Steve's pictures form the other day, I visited a near by brook too. Steve's snow looks much more fluffy though.