No noise reduction and an ISO of 800 on the D300.
This is what you can get from even quite inexpensive prime lenses and good lighting; in this case a light overcast creates nice softer contrast and captures the difficult red tonality of this rose.
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Straight from the camera; an untouched .jpg file.
No noise reduction and an ISO of 800 on the D300. This is what you can get from even quite inexpensive prime lenses and good lighting; in this case a light overcast creates nice softer contrast and captures the difficult red tonality of this rose. This image was shot with the lovely Tokina 90mm f2.5 macro lens I scored in a wonderful piece of luck when i was perusing our local 'Trademe' online auction site (think eBay but better organised). It was passingly mentioned with a FM2 film Nikon and a nice manual-focus f1.4 50mm lens; needless to say I snapped it up at the $200 asking price. I was overjoyed to find the Tokina to be virtually mint and as great a lens as I remembered when I had an Olympus mount one on my OM4... ah the 1980's.
If you're interested in macro photography the 70's and 80's era manual focus lenses can be an excellent place to start; our D300 will even meter nikon mount ones, as will all the Pentax DSLR's the pentax k mount examples. I'll be posting a lot of images with this lens... Pied Oystercatcher (Haematopus longirostris) backlit through a translucent reflector and then cleaned up digitally.
Otago harbour is a fairly clean (clean enough to have a small little-neck clam 'cockle' collection business) and biologically vibrant environment with plenty of small fry and zooplankton. This results in quite excited surges of feeding from large flocks of shags ably supported by dive-bombing terns whenever there is a concentration of food (as above); generally out in the main channel and so it's a bit difficult to get close-up shots without a *really* big lens. These are mostly spotted shags in eclipse plumage and the smaller white-fronted terns. It's most likely small crustaceans (krill) that they're feeding on. Closer to shore we have the usual complement of herons,gulls and ducks but are also particularly lucky to have small flocks and random individuals of the spectacular Royal Spoonbills (Platalea regia), which as recently as a decade ago only numbered around 1000 nationally. These (above and below) were feeding in Sawyers Bay. Top-of-the-food-chain creatures such as these give us vital clues as to the state of the whole ecosystem. It gives me a lift every time I see them. One of a series of early shots I took with my, fresh out of the courier box, Tamron 70-300 vc zoom on the D300.
I still haven't used this lens all that much, but I'm very impressed with it; particularly since mine was quite a modest price on the second hand market. I used the Nik plugin 'Vivesa' to selectively bump up the exposure on this wee guy whilst leaving the background untouched. The weather has been so mild and dry that we have had a good breeding season for these tiny personable flycatchers. Lilies to me sometimes have a semi-sentient animal quality, particularly in dimmer light.
I have a tendency to photograph them obsessively because of this back-of-the-brain response. An active and attractive little bee; I think it's the species above since it's not as flattened and 'bee-like' as the most common Leioproctus genus is supposed to be (I could be mistaken).
Using my 1:2 life-size 90mm Tokina macro lens on the crop-sensor Nikon D300 results in a decent scale within the frame for insects down to around 1cm in length. It also provides sufficient distance from the front element to give plenty of unshaded natural light from all angles and a less disturbing proximity to shy creatures. This genus of native bees has currently only seven described species.
They are quite tiny and unobtrusive, without typical pollen carrying structures on their legs. They seem to be abundant here and I've seen plenty of them feeding on Pohutukawa nectar. S l e e p e r t o w n a shallow bay of memories with lifting mist and generally beyond the ken of waking thought the grinding drive the goals unsought by all except the outer shell the home wherein all daylight dwells a burning light to seal the flesh and sear away unwelcome guests who fill the air and deaden sound nameless in a sleeper town a shallow bay of memories with lifting mist and generally expiring cores of sodden hope that smoulder in their choking smoke no words of comfort to be told nor revelations here unfold a tidal silver here alloyed becomes pure black the deeper void to fill the lungs already drowned nameless in a sleeper town R |
Roger
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