Plant Patterns

Just a few close shots of patterns on plants in my garden











It was good practice using the M5 with 28mm macro lens in very blustery conditions.
All taken in RAW, cropped and saved as 100% JPGs in Affinity Photo.

Minibeasts

An afternoon look round to see what minibeasts were about.

Bee on Bramble



Woodlouse on rotting wood



Ants on the same rotting wood





A moth, possibly AgriphilaTristella

 

Finally a spider

 

as yet unidentified.

Pollen Beetle Video Re-visited

In his comment yesterday Adrian (Adrian's Images) wondered how much it would be possible to crop the video clips from yesterday. I experimenting with what is know as a Ken Burns zoom in iMovie (where you set start and end sizes of crop and the software slowly moves from one to the other) on two of the clips. It worked better on the first one where the lens was just set to zoom as there is a better depth of field. The result: (no music this time)



Not at all bad.

Pollen Beetle - Video

OK. So I spent a bit more on the new set up. I found a mint condition used EF-M 28mm macro lens that I had my eye on. Lets me get within about an inch of a subject and has LED lighting built in round the front lens. No extra batteries needed as they take the power from the camera battery.





The LEDs are not over bright. Good enough when that close to a subject to add some illumination to darker areas of the subject. Switchable at two light intensities. Choice of left, right or both on.

I had looked round for something to test it on and found some flowers which had pollen beetles. It took three attempts. Just as I had the first fixed in place the beetle flew away. On the second attempt the beetle dropped off. It was a case of third time lucky.

After a few still photo takes I though it would be more interesting to make a video. One great facility when shooting video is the ability to use the touch screen and change the area for the lens to focus on. Either tap a new place or drag the focal area box to a new position for a smooth change in focus.



Enough ramble - on to the video. (No tweaking, exactly as taken at 1080p HD)



 
1st clip with the lens set to macro, the others with the setting on 'super macro'

Sunset

First decent colourful Sunset I've seen for ages.

Closer and Closer

Just received a Viltrox EF-S to EF-M adaptor, £29.99 from Amazon. It is a good solid metal build with gold plated contacts so all camera and lens facilities work. A genuine Canon one will set you back around £135

Thinking it was some time since I did a bit of macro photography I set things up:



Parts left to right:
Raynox DCR-250 Super Macro Conversion Lens surrounded by LED ring light.
Canon EF 70-200mm zoom lens.
Viltrox EF-S to EF-M adaptor
Canon M5 camera with LED light controller on top.

Subject - Hibiscus flower held in retort stand.
Camera fitted with wireless remote shutter control.
Lens set to 70mm, 4 focus stacked photos converted from RAW to JPG (100%)
Processed with Zerene Stacker then cropped.



Lens set to 200mm. Single photo.
Processed from RAW and tweaked in Affinity Photo.



Camera set to manual 1/80 sec f32

Soap Box Time

I've been looking round for a lightweight but sturdy camera tripod. My niggle here is that it appears all modern tripods use the 'quick release' gimmick. It may well release the camera quickly from the tripod. The problem is that unless you invest in several quick release plates it slows down the ability to change cameras. Personally I find them an annoyance if permanently fitted to a camera when using it hand held. Also I find a large knurled screw head on the old system much easier to use than the little D shaped wobbly handle on the screw in a quick release plate.

In the end I spent some time looking at used tripods built to the old standard with a fixed plate and locking screw / bolt. Each to their own. I guess we all have our favoured methods of working.