Barn at Infirmary Mound Park

A couple of weekends back I went out shooting while my family relaxed around the house. With the bad weather that week, I was itching to get outside and shoot.

Naturally, the day before I had seen several Red-Tailed Hawks in various locations. So of course there were none to be seen that whole afternoon while I was out. My search ended up at Infirmary Mound park. I figured if I couldn't spot a hawk, at least I could hike at the park and get some shots of the ice.

What I ended up shooting (among other things) was this great old barn. You could tell it used to be painted red, but the weathered wood was showing through. And I was there as the sun was getting low on the horizon, so I had great light to work with.

The photo was just the type of shot I have been thinking about lately. I saw an article on a sort of pseudo HDR technique, so I gave it a try. I like the result and in the process I picked up several good Photoshop tips.



So how did I do it? Well, I found the link to the technique at David Ziser's DigitalProTalk blog. To read about this technique and the free plugin, follow the link to Enigma Studios. I will say that I expanded on the technique a bit to produce this image. Give it a try and don't be afraid to experiment!

Macro Primer Pt II - Reversing a Lens

In my first article, I wrote about close up filters, an inexpensive way to get into macro photography. In this article, I will be talking about another way to "create" a macro lens. Depending on your situation, this may also be an inexpensive endeavor.

Let's say you just walked your old 50mm lens out to the curb for trash man to pick up. You used it with the old 35mm film camera, but maybe the mount is different than your DSLR or you switched camps and have no use for the old lens.

WHAT ARE YOU, NUTS?!?! YOU JUST THREW AWAY A FREE MACRO LENS! Get back out to the curb NOW!

That's right, if you have an old lens laying around, you don't have to pay another cent. The really great thing about this is that it doesn't matter what brand of lens you reverse. Canon, Nikon, whatever you have on hand

When I bought my Nikon, I thought my old lenses would fit the D50. Turns out most of my lenses are just a little too old. Too bad because I had quite a few. Then I discovered that if you have a lens and mount it to the camera backwards, voila, you have a macro lens.

There are two ways to use your lens backwards. One is an adapter that will let you mount the lens backwards on the camera. I've even seen a DIY adapter, though personally I would not use it since it is constructed of plastic and epoxy. Probably not a big deal, but the adapter will probably run you about $15 so DIY will not yield a big savings here.

The second method, which I use, requires two lenses. It turns out that the 80-200mm zoom lens that I had for my old Nikon F does fit the D50. It's not a fast lens and I probably wouldn't use it for much else anyway. I also have a 50mm f1.4 that does not fit my D50. Both lenses happen to take a 52mm filter, meaning the front of each lens is the same diameter.

To create my macro lens, I put the two lenses together, as shown in the picture below.

When I first read about this, I was eager to find out how well this would work, and I couldn't locate a macro coupler. So I improvised and used a piece of electrical tape to hold the lenses together. Since I consider this a dedicated macro lens, this works great. The original piece of tape is still holding the lenses in place a year later. I know I dismissed the DIY adapter a minute ago as risky, but really, the tape does work well.



If you want to find the macro couplers, check here.

What you need to know about this technique is that you have to be extremely close to your subject. Here is why: under normal circumstances, the lens element is designed to focus on the film plane. When you reverse the lens, that distance doesn't change - but instead of the film plane, your macro subject is in that location.

Another important fact, the faster the lens, the better. Unless you are going for a vignette effect, you want the reversed lens to be set to its widest aperture. Also, depth of field is extremely shallow with this technique.

In the previous article, I showed samples of how close you can get with the close up filters. As a reference, here are two shots from last time, and below that two shots with the reversed lens technique.

300mm, no close up filter	300mm, +7 close up
70mm zoom w/ 50 mm reversed	200mm zoom w/ 50 mm reversed

Obviously your results will vary, depending on what lenses are used to comprise your macro lens. Ready for some real world examples? Here are some critters who were cooperative enough to let me get close to them. For reference, the spider descending toward my face was approximately a quarter of an inch in diameter.





Click on the fly to see a high res version.

Drive By - Frosty Morning

This is a good example of why I carry my camera everywhere. It had rained an icy rain the night before and then turned to a very light snow in the morning. On my way to work, I noticed that the ice coated weeds now had snowflakes stuck to them. The sun was still rising, which gave me the really cool background to work with.




This particular field, by the way, has been a real treasure trove of photo ideas. I've stopped numerous times on my drive in to work. I've shot sunrises, the ubiquitous 'farm' tree, and various deer over the last few years from the edge of the road.

What Does It Take to Create a Christmas Photo?

As we have in years past, we shot our own Christmas photo of the children to send out with our Christmas Cards. Here is the shot:



So you may be wondering, "What kind of fool would do this to himself?" Or perhaps you have had too much eggnog and instead are wondering, "What does it take to get a shot like that so close to Christmas with four over-excited children?" Well, let me just say that you are very well spoken given the eggnog factor. But the answer to the first question is 'ME'. To answer the second, I offer this little slide show of the 'rejected' photos. As an added bonus, I've included the alternate, second choice photo at the end of the show.