25 August 2008

Failures of housekeeping

So, on the balcony, there's a couple of these little yellow flowers growing; I presume from spilled bird seed, rather than as a side effect of bird mutualism with some distant plant, but one never knows.
The about-what-it-actually looked like version is this one, below; not quite straight down from very close (not quite in the lens hood, close). That black bar is one of the uprights of the railing; probably 3/4 of an inch square.
And this is what happens if I start trying to turn down the brightness and exposure far enough that there is actual detail in the structure of the flower.
And this is the whole thing, turned down that far. Lots of falloff, but I think it looks interesting. (Inaccurate, but interesting. :)
I really need to stop trying to do flower macro without a tripod, too, but tripod and impulse don't really go together.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous00:36

    "tripod" and "impulse" don't really go together.

    my problem exactly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. orc02:46

    That's why g-d invented the AF280T flash unit. Shovel enough lumens onto the subject and you can push that shutter speed down to the point where a tripod isn't needed.

    I take bee pictures with a 300mm macro lens, all handheld, so it should be possible to snag a flower without too much pain.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Graydon21:27

    Hi fishie --

    Tripods are still much better than the Nikon new camera announcement joke, where there would be a powerful capacitor in the camera body that would zap you across the hands with many DC volts, locking all voluntary muscles for the duration of the exposure. Good for 10 stops!

    And, to be honest, part of the lack in my case is not wanting to take the center column out and turn it upside down so I can take pictures of wee flowers on the balcony. The rubber end caps are just dire.

    Orc -- Is that a specific recommendation for AF280T, or some high-lumen device in general? (I know diddly about flash...)

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. orc00:12

    If you're using old lenses (m42 and non-A k) you need something like the AF280T, because it does regular ttl. The newer flashes are pretty nice (I had an AF360 for a while, but it fires at full power with old lenses [I could do flash guide computation, but that's a pain] and can certainly do a lot more with your modern lenses than I can do with the 280.)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Graydon21:32

    Ah, thank you!

    I foresee some research.

    ReplyDelete

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