Coneflower II ~ Pollen Hunter

timelapse (62)in #photography • 10 years ago (edited)

Pollen beginning to emerge on this Echinacea flower. The extension rings arrived this afternoon and I tested them out with the Sony 90mm macro. Focus is off ever so slightly to me. Using an IR remote to trigger the camera. Perhaps the lack of focus is due to camera shake when the crazy loud shutter of an A7r does it's thing? Probably should have opened up the aperture to 5.6 instead of 11 or 16.

$66 for Vello EXT-SFED Deluxe Auto Focus Extension Tube Set for Sony E-Mount Lenses... I didn't try the autofocus through the rings. The 90mm is on the large side around 600 grams and sags a bit when coupled with both rings which did not impress me. No light leaks, so I suppose all is well. I think using this out in the field could be hazardous for the gear if one isn't extra careful and gentle.

The dark background is the front of my oven - a completely incidental inclusion that seems to work, though that type of surface is highly reflective so you have to control the light in accordingly. I should this both wide and tight and f5.6 won me over once again.

Reversed Olympus 21mm f3.5

Pollen spears with some fairly shallow depth of field - I suppose this is part of the trade-off for using this technique.
Much closer look at the same sunflower from yesterday. Using a Helicoid adapter would aid in focusing... it just arrived in fact and I've yet to open it. I had to move the flower back and forth to achieve focus (was easier than moving the camera back and forth).

I was also shifting between APS & Full frame mode which gives you about 1.5x magnification. Actually, I'm fairly sure it's just a crop of the full frame shot which one could extract from the original frame, but shifting to APS is perhaps easier sometimes.

Sony 90mm

LED light source is a bit harsh and undiffused. Using a softbox would help remedy this hot spot.

If you haven't attempted the reversed lens setup, it's just a cheap adapter ring to get going with whatever lens you may have lying around. A nifty 50mm will give you around +20 diopters & a 24mm yields around +41 diopters, so the wider the lens, the higher the magnification. Looking forward to trying this technique with the helicoid adapter (m42) and some russian glass some of which has beautiful bokeh.

One thing I've noticed in the quest to get closer is that the overall beauty of the flower starts to fade away at the expense of the technical pursuits of getting ever closer. I suppose once you reach a certain point of seeing an individual pollen grain under a microscope the beauty and intrigue returns, but the middle ground or no mans land leaves a bit to be desired at least for me.

The lighting on this one was a bit too far away, but the patterns found within it are enticing as is the perfect halo of pollen.