Imprint

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4(3)

Hacked Off

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As someone who meddles with cables from less than a millimetre across up to big beasties thicker than your wrist, I quite like the lack of scale here.
Niche interest though...
(About 8mm total diameter for any fellow weirdos in the audience)

Life, Lemons, Lights, and Lenses

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I was scratting round for a subject this evening, and eventually landed on this lemon.
Being edible, I suppose it's at least loosely in my snackro category.
This one's a stack of 33 frames.

Still Kaputt, But Closer

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I smell of spray paint. My house smells of spray paint. My entire neighbourhood probably smells of spray paint.
But progress has been made, and I took a photo.
What an unusually productive evening.

This one's a focus stack at 4.5x magnification

Self-Similarity

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This is the first time I've really taken a close look at an individual dandelion seed - I was struck by the almost fractal nature of the seed with respect to the whole dandelion head.
The individual fibres are also surprisingly rough and spiky.
I will have to revisit this one I think, perhaps I should drag the microscope out and get properly close in on the fibre structure.
This one is at 5x magnification.

Glow In The Dark

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I thought it was time to go for something other than flowers, so I gave this LED the macro treatment.

Beauty In Decay

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I gave this leaf skeleton a bit of macro treatment.
I think it's fascinating to see how it's decayed but left the veins behind.
3x magnification stacked shot made from 10 frames shot with my WeMacro focus rail, stacked with Helicon Focus.

CAT5

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The innards of a bit of network cable.

Success!

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We finally got through the EMC tests we have been working on at work today, with the addition of a little widget we designed.
That's another bit of the project in the bag.
This one's a focus stack of 68 images.

Unrelated, but this is my 1250th post here.

A Moment For Reconditioning

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I bought myself another 2nd-hand lens yesterday, the EF8-15mm f/4 L fisheye. I've been considering one for a long time, but they don't come up locally all that often.
While it works well, it is not in perfect condition; it looks like the protruding front element has made contact with one or two things over the years, as it has a few very fine scratches, and the weather seal was pretty well mangled, as is relatively common with used L series lenses.
The seals aren't protected when the lens is capped and stuffed in your bag, and they're made of a fairly soft silicone, so they're easily snagged and torn if you aren't careful.
The new RF series caps are a bit bigger and protect the seal, so I have contemplated either getting a few of those, although they're a rather tight fit on the EF lenses, or perhaps 3D printing an extra ring to attach to the EF caps to cover up the seal.
Fortunately, the weather seal is a fairly straightforward repair now I've found a ready source of affordable replacement seals. I've made this repair on several of my lenses now with good results.

Hopefully I'll have some wacky fisheye photos from this lens to share soon.

Examine The Fracture Surface

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I spent a bit of time today looking at the surfaces of a metal component that had fatigue fractured, and ended up taking some photos for the report. If I'd remembered to take the correct lens with me, I might even have posted one here, but alas I did not.
Therefore, you'll have to make do with this snackro of the fracture surface of a Matchmaker chocolate instead.

It's much tastier, and a lot less chewy than a lump of steel, I'll give it that much.

This one's a 3x magnification photo (plus a minor crop), and is a stack made up of 37 frames.

Nestled Drop

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I was absolutely knackered after work today. I flaked out on the sofa and woke myself up a couple of times with a particularly horrendous snore.
Predictably, now it's approaching midnight, I've perked up nicely and don't want to go to bed (as usual).

I've got a few daffodils on the go at the moment, so I thought I'd give them a spot of macro treatment. This one's a 4x magnification shot, un-stacked this time.

I 3D printed a grid for my Godox MF12 flashes the other night, and gave it a go here. It seems to work OK.
It's quite interesting working at this scale, even a small flash like the MF12 has the look a much larger light would have at a more normal scale, but you still need quite a lot of power.

Measured Response

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Seems an appropriate coda to the day, which was largely spent measuring things, thinking about measuring things, and talking about measuring things.
Not necessarily in that order.
And albeit to rather higher precision than the trusty steel rule can deliver.

It's very rare I use this lens without focus stacking, but today is one of those occasions.

Gingernut

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First working day of the year, and I ended up doing about an hour and a half over. Silly boy.
Despite that, I actually managed to make real food with actual vegetables tonight. Astonishing.

This pair of photos are 3x macro shots, stacks of 62 and 77 frames respectively.

One more after the jump.

Hope Springs Eternal

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This is a tiny bit of new growth that has appeared in the last few days on a small rose plant that I thought was completely dead.
It very nearly got binned last week, but I thought I'd give it a couple more weeks on the off chance. That appears to have paid off.
This one's a stack of 17 shots at 1.5x magnification.

Whirring Miniature

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A macro shot of a little gearbox that (along with a bag of other bits) has been consuming rather a lot of my time this week.
We managed to reduce one of them to a small pile of dust on an endurance test last night, so I spent several hours this afternoon working on some improvements - Let's hope we can treat this one better!

Quality Street

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A present from my in-laws subjected to the snackro treatment.
This one's a focus stack of 52 shots.
Ideally, I'd have either found a nice shiny example of this chocolate, or somehow polished it up to remove the marks from the surfaces.

Peppercorns

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The week has gone to pot by Tuesday afternoon...
Not the best shot, but I'm knackered, and the other one I did was worse. I think I've got some minor vibration issues coming from the focus rail with the setup in this orientation.

Pop!

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Continuing my occasional theme of macro photos of snacks with this 1x macro of a piece of popcorn (or my brain, I can't be completely sure these days 🤯)
Snackro photography, you might say.
This one's a focus stack of 39 shots.

Texture In Smooth Stuff

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Another possible option for 52Frames texture.
It's interesting to find texture like boulders even on a smooth surface, when you get close enough.
I gelled the flashes in suitably garish colours to bring the texture out more.
This is a 3.5x macro, and is a stack of 22 shots.
The rest of the stone is after the break.