My First MPE-65-Style Images (Without One)

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

My First MPE-65-Style Images (Without One)

Post by Harold Gough »

I have been experimenting with getting the best out of my legacy lenses with my E-P2. Where I think it will progress the matter at minimal expense, I purchase further lenses, as with this one.

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=18452

This is from a Kiron 28-70mm macro reversed on 110 mm of extension, set at f11 and with ISO 800. An Olympus T32 flsh, with a dedicated diffuser, was mounted to as to be pointing downwards at the subject and metering its own output.

The field of view here is 10mm (20mm full frame) and the image is uncropped:

Image

[Edit] Reworked image*

Image

[Edit ends]

* See reply for 17 May.

The presence of the flash meant that the hotshoe was not available for the VF-2 viewfinder so the rear screen had to be used. Hand-held. I probably just missed the focus on the rear of the thorax, as the fly is at an angle.

Harold
Last edited by Harold Gough on Tue May 21, 2013 6:28 am, edited 4 times in total.
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

This one is slightly better.

Uncropped

Image

[Edit] Reworked*

Image

[Edit ends]

[Second edit]

Ths version was revworked by saving as a highqulity TIFF, processin in Photoshop and then converting to highquality JPEG in O M 2. I see some small gains in detail.

Image

[Second edit ends]

* See reply for 17 May.

HaroldImage
Last edited by Harold Gough on Fri May 24, 2013 1:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

On further examination, this one is a bit better than I thought it was:

Cropped by about 50%:

Image


Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Gerris2
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Dec 30, 2011 7:16 am

Post by Gerris2 »

Do you shoot using a tripod? My apologies if you stated this fact. It's a long construct with the length of the lens plus the extension tube of over 100mm so I would think having the tripod necessary to steady the camera. I enjoyed the depth of field you obtained without resorting to photostacking images.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

Gerris2 wrote:Do you shoot using a tripod? My apologies if you stated this fact. It's a long construct with the length of the lens plus the extension tube of over 100mm so I would think having the tripod necessary to steady the camera. I enjoyed the depth of field you obtained without resorting to photostacking images.
No. A tripod is out of the question. The surrounding shrubbery would snag the tripod legs and shake the subjects off. Besides they more to different leaves quite frequently. There are a lot of reject frames, perhaps 1 in 10 acceptable, rather fewer good. I am new to working at this magnification in the field, using the live view screen on the back of the camera because I have no choice. There is a lot of weight towards the front of the extension (I added a second, smaller, flash this morning) which is tiring on my arms.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

Today I added a smaller (T20) flash gun with diffuser material across it, to provide fill flash. Some test shots indicated that this, together with the main flash, gave the correct intensity for f11 at ISO 100. It turned out that f16 was correct. As the weather was variable, I decided to not adjust flash intensities at this time. So these were shot at f16, ISO 100, uncropped:

Image

In spite of the twin flash, this benefited from some Shadow Relief in Topaz DeTail 2.

[Image

[Edit] Reworked*

Image

[Edit ends]

* Seee 17 May reply.

Further details of the hardware will be posted here:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... hp?t=18452

Harold
Last edited by Harold Gough on Tue May 21, 2013 6:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

naturalmente
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Location: Barcelona
Contact:

Post by naturalmente »

Great close-up

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

naturalmente wrote:Great close-up
Thanks.

I have paid little attention to composition in this topic, as I am more interested in showing how the setup works. Accurate composition in the field is a mostly a matter of luck. At this magnification, pressing the release button can easily move the subject halfway across the frame (and/or out of focus).

I have used the setup (which has been incrementally modified) for only four days, two of them with prolonged or frequent rain allowing little activity. (Even if I was willing, the insects were sheltering somewhere). So more practice will lead to improvement and some ability to frame accurately.

In the meantime, I will crop more images for format.

When the zoom was accidentally moved to a wider angle (50mm) the difficulty increased significantly.

This, in its final form will be the macro setup I use daily in the next insect season.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

Having recently obtained a Kiron 105mm macro lens, which does 1:1 on full frame, 2:1 on m4/3, this, together with suitable, high quality, diopter supplementaries, may be the way forward, without the need to reverse it. My first attempt:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 961#126961

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

I have added reworked images marked by "[Edit] reworked*" in the posts.

For the originals, the RAW (ORF) files were opened by software which, unknown to me until recently, does not convert the ORFs to JPEGs with as much detail as the software used today.

The processing of the JPEGs has been with the same software as used first time but I cannot be sure that I used it in exactly the same way.

I have done this because the images were shot with my setup, which I hoped would give high-quality images. I was quite satisfied and I am even more so now. The third one is of particular interest as it was shot with (twin) flash.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
Posts: 5786
Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2008 2:17 am
Location: Reading, Berkshire, England

Post by Harold Gough »

I have also reworked this image again, this time via the high quality TIFF route:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... 024#117024

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

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