Another Perspective

Shot these with a 50mm lens in reverse which shortens the minimum focus distance for a "macro-like" effect. Haven't had the chance to do any portrait sessions recently. Hope to be able to make time for one soon.

Change

I made some changes to the blog which wanted to do for a very long time. Don't get freaked out by the large images in posts, your computer isn't broken, the settings were changed to show them larger since I widened the blog width :) 

I really should be studying right now, been living on the edge since last semester always studying in the eleventh hour. 

Shot these photos quite a while back, I almost forgot that I still have them. Didn't use a macro lens but I used the kit lens in reverse position. I have done this before in an older post. It gives the effect of a macro lens by shortening the minimum focus distance.

I've also been getting the hang of using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Guess the initial reaction I had to seeing a very simple interface made me think that it was much more complicated than it really was. In the end it only took a couple of hours to get used to. All of these were edited in Lightroom 3.

Inside These Lines

These water droplets were shot with my camera kit lens held in a reverse position towards the camera. It allows for a really short minimum focus distance to achieve a sort of macro lens effect.

The only trouble is that you wont get auto focus, you cant adjust the aperture and you need a lot of light if you don't want your pictures to turn out blur.

I'm so bored. I can do so much better than this. I just don't have what I need :(

Kit Lens to Macro

These shots of an Ant moving around a Mulberry Plant were taken with the Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Kit Lens. Some of you may or may not know that when you hold any SLR lens back-to-front against the camera mount, It shortens the minimum focus distance between your subject and lens. This means you can go much closer to the subject that you are trying to photograph. Unless you already have a macro lens then you really don't need to do this.

But for those who are on a tight budget and want to experiment with macro, then try this out [at your own risk]. Make sure you get the hang of using Manual control on your camera so that you don't underexpose or overexpose.

The problem with doing this is that you're going to risk dust flying into your lens and camera body [so be careful]. You also can't auto focus because obviously you're just holding it in front of the camera mount. The only way to focus onto your subject is to move the lens closer or further.

Which also brings about the need to shoot under bright light to be able to increase shutter speed to avoid blurring from your hand movements. That is why the second shot has a slight blur to it.

Another problem is aperture control. Unless you are using a lens with manual aperture control, you are stuck with the wide aperture of the lens. This means that your area of focus is incredibly thin and you have to be quick to press the shutter when the subject goes into focus.

Having said all that, the shots that you get will really be worth the try :D

Dragonfly

A macro shot of a dragonfly.