The Hyacinth Finished Loading...

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This is the same plant I shot a few days ago, but properly out now. It smells remarkably strong!
A couple more after the jump.

Earworm: Give Me Real, Don't Give Me Fake

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Out of nowhere this evening, this line popped into my head, and dug its claws in. It must be years since I heard this song last, but my brain evidently decided that I was going to listen to it!
As the song played, I was looking in the kitchen cupboards, where I spotted the jars of sugar and sweetener, and presto, we have this photo of real and fake.

By some coincidence, today was a day with two musical rediscoveries - Point Of View by DB Boulevard popped up on the radio as I got to work this morning, and this one - Politik by Coldplay, materialised out of nowhere this evening.
Odd.

This is a stack of 115 frames.

Bleh

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I'm feeling a bit overworked and a bit stressed, and it's manifesting as poor creativity.
I hope this improves soon, it's rather tedious!

Right As Rain?

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Why do they say that? I'm certainly not right, and rain is unpleasantly wet!
It does make for a dreamy abstract sort of look though, which suits my current mood.

Cellular Ephemera

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I thought I'd try out one of Andrew Lanxon's macro suggestions tonight - oil and water. Check out his work, and YouTube channel too - if you're interested in photography, he's a worthwhile watch.

I'm quite pleased with this, especially for a first go.
I think I'll be giving this another go in the future, and perhaps trying more liquids.
I did briefly try adding a few drops of isopropanol before I packed up, and this produced some interesting dynamic effects, but this photo was still my favourite.

Carnation

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I was going for a more abstract look with this one.

I was also having a play with a bit of an unconventional macro arrangement - my 50mm f/2.5 macro lens, with a 20mm extension tube, and then a 1.4x teleconverter that is normally only usable with specific L series lenses because it has an element that protrudes into the back of those lenses. The extension tube made space for that element, and it appears to work quite well.

Aphids

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I was about to bin these old roses when I noticed some aphids living on them.

Tomatoes in Progress

I’m staying with my in-laws for a couple of days, and they have fingers that are substantially greener than mine. For reference, I appear to have the mysterious ability to accidentally kill off any plants that come within about 100m of me.
They are propagating a burgeoning collection of veg on their windowsill, and the hairs on this tomato plant were really catching the sun this morning.

I wasn’t totally happy with the photos I took this morning, so I came back later with a torch and had another go.
I could have done with focus stacking these, but although I have both the camera and laptop here, I stupidly don’t have the right USB cable with me!
A couple more after the jump.

Lunch is ruined

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It is only fortuitous that I had a new pack of bagels ready to go...

Bubbles!

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Continuing the (unplanned) abstract theme with some bubbles today.
This is a very transient subject to shoot, so I ended up with a fairly narrow aperture and blasted the scene with a softbox from above.
I don't have any flashes with modelling lights, but I tried bouncing a worklight up onto the face of the softbox, which worked really well for finding my shot, but was dim enough to make little impact on the final shot.
The extension tubes are proving pretty handy for getting a bit closer. I might splash out on a decent set at some point, just from a quality of life standpoint.

A couple more after the jump.

From the sublime to the ridiculous

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After the extreme depth of field work recently, here's the other end of the spectrum.
A wide open aperture on the 50mm f/1.4, plus a small extension tube, made the DOF vanishingly narrow.
I cranked the ISO up and turned off noise reduction to get a film grain feel to to the image.

I need to get one of the film cameras out for a play again...

Fell off the wagon (2024-03-08)

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First time during this project...
A headache, and feeling very tired after a rather annoying, underproductive few days back at work, conspired to put a stopper in my creativity, and I ended up shooting little and posting nothing.
This one is a backup pic taken earlier in the week - another one stacked with Helicon Focus.

Onwards and hopefully upwards...

Blackthorn

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More fun with stacked macro work today.
I ordered some cheap EF extension tubes from Amazon, so I can get a bit more magnification out of my macro lenses – they seem to work rather well, despite some questionable reviews on the product page.
I've been trying out Helicon Remote to control the 6D Mk II today, and this makes the whole process very straightforward. You get quite an intuitive interface where you can set the extents of the focus range, and then you can kick the process off without touching the camera. It's a bit slower to run the shooting sequence than the built in bracketing on the M6 Mk II, but it’s a lot more controlled, with less guesswork for the end point and number of shots required.

Photos are downloaded on the fly, and immediately after shooting, the photos are sent straight into Focus for stacking.
A quick trip from there to Photoshop for RAW processing, and there you go...

After the jump I've also included another shot of yesterday’s subject – some of the buds are starting to come out now, and I thought they were a rather nice colour.