Random Photos

[DennisN]

I recently acquired another fun glass toy, a vintage (1979-) Canon nFD 50mm f/3.5 (Macro), which is a dedicated macro lens (i.e. for close-up photography). Macro lenses can be quite expensive, but I found this one at a good price and in great condition at a Swedish online auction site.

It's quite a weird looking lens. The front lens sits deep within a grooved cone:

And the "focus throw" (how much you can turn the focus ring) is huge for being a 50mm. The lens extends from being a normally sized 50mm (left below) to becoming some weirdly long 50mm (right below).

Some initial test shots with the lens:

1. Close-up of an eye of one of my cats:
(handheld camera, so it isn't as sharp as it could be)

2. Close-up of a lime (the small green citrus fruit):

3. Close-up of a lime slice:

I think it will be fun to use this lens in the spring and summer on flowers and insects.

 

[dlgoff]

I recently acquired another fun glass toy, a vintage (1979-) Canon nFD 50mm f/3.5 (Macro), which is a dedicated macro lens (i.e. for close-up photography). Macro lenses can be quite expensive, but I found this one at a good price and in great condition at a Swedish online auction site.

It's quite a weird looking lens. The front lens sits deep within a grooved cone:

View attachment 293906

And the "focus throw" (how much you can turn the focus ring) is huge for being a 50mm. The lens extends from being a normally sized 50mm (left below) to becoming some weirdly long 50mm (right below).

View attachment 293907

Some initial test shots with the lens:

1. Close-up of an eye of one of my cats:
(handheld camera, so it isn't as sharp as it could be)
View attachment 293908

2. Close-up of a lime (the small green citrus fruit):
View attachment 293909

3. Close-up of a lime slice:
View attachment 293910

I think it will be fun to use this lens in the spring and summer on flowers and insects.

3. Close-up of a lime slice:
View attachment 293910
Wow! Nice

 

[BillTre]

I like your equipment tours and hearing how you plan to use them.

How close can you get with your lens?

I got a macro for shooting pictures of my fish, live swimming in a tank several years ago.
Shooting the fish moving in an aquarium required a long working distance, a telephoto-macro, since the fish were not often near the front of the tank.
In my shoots, I could resolve single pigment cells (they are big, and black on silver) from about 1-2 feet away (in optimal conditions).
I believe the little blobs in the pulp of the fruit are also single cells (all swollen up with juice), so you may be doing the same thing.

 

[DennisN]

How close can you get with your lens?

I have just briefly tested it and I didn't think about that when I tested it.
If I remember the specifications correctly it's default minimum focus distance is ca 20-25 cm. But the lens can also be used with extension tubes, which change the minimum focus distance.

I will do some tests later today and report back here in this thread.

 

[BillTre]

Sounds nice.

With very close, there are all kinds of new problems, like lighting and shadows.

 

[collinsmark]

But the lens can also be used with extension tubes, which change the minimum focus distance.

Here's a photo I took about 14 years or so ago, using extension tubes. It wasn't taken with a macro lens, just a normal lens with some extension tubes.

Machine Head

Here's an article (from B&H photo, who sells all the stuff in the article) about macro photography gear. It does have some interesting ideas, I must say.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explor...ws-reversal-rings-macro-couplers-and-focusing

 

[dlgoff]

I can't resist taking photos of my skies.
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Here are some I just took. Very Yellow:

 

[DennisN]

I will do some tests later today and report back here in this thread.

Sounds nice.

With very close, there are all kinds of new problems, like lighting and shadows.

I did a relatively thorough test using just the lens and also different extension tubes.

And there were various challenges, particularly related to focusing, and I also did a focus stacking test
at the highest magnification I could achieve.

But it's late here and I'm tired, so I'll return with descriptions and photo examples later.
But I can say I estimated the default minimum focus distance for the lens as ca 23 cm.

My next post will be about the journey into the heart of a bell pepper.

 

[morrobay]

 

[dlgoff]

@berkeman
I've been thinking about my ham radio mentor and decided to see if there was anything about him by doing an image search on his call sign (W0AFQ) and low and behold I found these two photos of him.

The man in the middle:

The man standing:

He taught me so much about electronics and electronic construction. To give you an idea of when this was, he and I first experimented with RTL when that logic first came to the scene.
from wikipedia:

... design was begun in 1961 and which first flew in 1966.

@berkeman
Did you notice the ARRL on the shirt of the man in the bottom photo?

 

[DennisN]

Sounds nice.

With very close, there are all kinds of new problems, like lighting and shadows.

My next post will be about the journey into the heart of a bell pepper.

A Journey into a Bell Pepper

Gear: Sony A6000 and a Canon nFD 50mm f/3.5 Macro lens, without and with extension tubes
Extra gear: Tripod, remote control, 2 lamps to help with illumination
Camera settings: ISO 200, f/9.5 (approx. the sharpest f-stop for the lens)
Focusing distances tried: from 55 cm down to 20 cm.
Processing: Some basic processing in Dxo PhotoLab and Photoshop

First I want to say I'm more or less a beginner at macro photography. I've tried some things for fun before with extension rings (e.g. flowers and bees), but during this test I understood that macro photography can be quite different from "normal" photography.

I learned that there are various challenges which I won't go into detail about, other than mentioning that there are focusing challenges because the depth of field (DOF) can get extremely tiny.

Ok, onto the bell pepper...

1. Here's a tasty bell pepper at a somewhat "normal" focusing distance (55 cm):

2. And still tasty, but also a bit magnified (now at 37 cm):

Well, my objective was not to do close-ups of the surface, but the seed "bundle" inside of it.
So I summoned my inner Jack the Ripper and sliced it in half.
I couldn't balance the slice as it was in the previous photos, so I turned it upside down.

3. The bell pepper slice with the seeds visible (still at 37 cm):

4. Let's go further in... (now at 27 cm):

And a little further... (now at 25 cm):

Now we are close to the minimum focusing distance, which is ca 23 cm.
I can't get closer without using extension tubes (or something similar).
If I go down to e.g. 20 cm the image gets out of focus:

So, time to mount extension tubes between the lens and camera. First we try a 10mm tube.

Lens + 10mm tube (at 22 cm):
(this looks promising, but also note how much of the photo that got unfocused!)

Now let's try the 16mm tube.
Lens + 16mm tube (at 20 cm):

And now, let's join the two tubes to one 26mm tube (10+16).
Lens + 26mm tubes (still at 20 cm):

And while we're at it, why not pull in the big guns? I have yet another tube, a 25mm one.
Let's join the three into a 51 mm tube (10+16+25).

Lens + 51mm tube (at 21 cm):
(Why 21 cm suddenly? Well, I don't know why, but I couldn't focus at 20 cm anymore with this tube combination.)

And this is as close as I could get to the seeds with the gear available.

But since there was so much that was out of focus, I tried focus stacking which is a technique where you take a number photos in which different parts are in focus, and then let a software combine the photos into one photo where hopefully more parts are in focus. It's pretty easy to automatically do this in Photoshop.

Final focus stacked photo (at 21 cm):
(made of 7 individual photos, including some extra postprocessing in Photoshop, but everything is still not quite in focus, though)

Not a pro macro photo, but still pretty cool, I think. At least it's fun.

For getting a feel of the magnification I measured one of seeds shown in the photo.
The seed diameter was ca 4 mm:

And here's the full gear assembled, quite a little beast measuring 20 cm in length :) :
(from left to right: camera, 16 mm and 10 mm extension tube, FD-NEX lens adapter, 25 mm extension tube, and finally the extended macro lens)

Afterwards the bell pepper found its final destiny inside my stomach. It was very tasty.

 

[morrobay]

 

[morrobay]

Small town - no faces

 

[dlgoff]

Here are some I just took. Very Yellow:
View attachment 293957
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More from my Kansas Skies; really cool this time of the year:

 

[morrobay]

 

[DennisN]

View attachment 294112

Three bell peppers in a traffic light configuration.

 

[DennisN]

Moon over tower:
(taken today with a vintage Tokina 135mm)

 

[dlgoff]

We just had a strong thunderstorm move through here (winds at 60 mph with gust of 80 mph:

 

[morrobay]

Same Thai girl from above

 

[morrobay]

And the sunset

 

[morrobay]

With this grainy moon it is clearly with a cheap phone and not a Tokina 135 mm

 

[DennisN]

With this grainy moon it is clearly with a cheap phone and not a Tokina 135 mm

If you like to try some more with the Moon there are some simple and cheap accessories you can use with
smartphones (they will also help with evening/night photography):

1) A basic tripod (which reduces blur when shooting in low light)
2) A tripod-smartphone adapter. Here is one I've got:

3) Using a camera app that has a timer option (i.e. a delayed shot), which also eliminates the camera shake that occurs when you touch the camera to take a shot (the default camera app on your phone may also already have this option).

I don't know which type of smartphone you've got, but I've got an Android type, and my favorite third-party camera app is "Open Camera" (completely free, supports manual options and a bunch of other things).

Google Play Link: Open Camera

 

[rsk]

School Christmas holidays are here and, partly because of Covid and partly because my employer still has my passport, I will be spending the holidays here, mainly wandering round this city.

 

[rsk]

View attachment 294112

I see your three colors and raise you a fourth

SPOILER: It's green inside and tastes like the green ones, not sweet like the red and yellow ones.

 

[morrobay]

You got me on peppers but you have a ways to go on Vietnamese girls/Thai girls

 

[morrobay]

School Christmas holidays are here and, partly because of Covid and partly because my employer still has my passport, I will be spending the holidays here, mainly wandering round this city.

View attachment 294416

I miss the city scene in Bangkok. Down the coast 80km now. The only way to get around is the skytrain or river boats. Otherwise it's messy

 

[rsk]

There are riverboats here too, but I haven't used them yet. Maybe once Covid is less of a concern.

I love just wandering round though - on foot everything is slower and you have time to stop and look. Most things I'd want to see are in walking distance now, especially since it's (relatively) cool at the moment. And for anything else there's grab bikes.

 

[morrobay]

Are there full size city busses ? I was in Saigon a few days, all I can say about motorbikes is too dangerous for me. There is that boat down the river to Vung Tau on the coast. ^ Sure I like walking around the city. But take the mass transit to get to any particular area

 

[DennisN]

Here's another shot I took recently with my macro lens, the tip of a ballpoint pen:

And after my test with focus stacking macro shots I got inspired to do some more of it using "normal" lenses outside. I think I've tried it before, but somehow I had forgot about it.

As I've said before in the thread, the trick is to take many photos where different parts are in focus and then let software combine them into one photo. A tripod is more or less a must when you do it.

It may sound tedious, but I actually thought it was pretty fun. I don't mind the pretty slow process when photographing in this way. You are pretty much forced to plan the shot and consider the entire scene when you shoot.

As you can see in the photos below, most of the things are in focus (but if you look closely you may find some things are out of focus).

Autumn evening (lens: Meike 35mm f/1.4, focus stacked)
(flickr version with better sharpness here)

Autumn tree (lens: Lens: Meike 35mm f/1.4, focus stacked)
(flickr version with better sharpness here)

Autumn leaves (lens: Canon FD 50mm f1.4, focus stacked)
(flickr version with better sharpness here)

Edit: Now I noticed that the sharpness of the photos goes down considerably when they are posted on the forum. The originals are much sharper than what can be seen above, so I add links to the photos on flickr also.

 

[dlgoff]

Christmas skies over Kansas:

 

[nsaspook]

https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/proxy.php?image=https%3A%2F%2Fc1.staticflickr.com%2F5%2F4475%2F37742797491_40f507ca5b_c_d.jpg&hash=1a8b5d231558cf9a807f1fca46b944ac
https://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/sciser.html

Anyone else have a collection of Science Service booklets?

 

[jtbell]

Seen on the TV coverage of New Year in Times Square in NYC:

Anybody want to move to Fort Lauderdale?

 

[morrobay]

Chinese girl from Hong Kong I spoke to at the jetty. 12 N and 100 E. 1January . 11am. 30 degrees Centigrade

 

[morrobay]

And a crowded Beach rd, along Pattaya beach. About 90% domestic Thai tourism these days.

 

[DennisN]

Happy new year!

A brand new shot with my macro lens, a red kalanchoe:

(f/11, 1/8s exposure, ISO 200, focus stacked)