Fresh green moss

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 5:42 pm

I am getting tired of gray skies and brown plants, so I went looking for some FRESH GREEN!

Found this nice moss in the lee of a fence, brought it inside to photograph.

The first image is almost full frame, the other two are progressively closer crops.

I always enjoy the texture of moss when I get close enough to see it. Hope you do too!

--Rik

Technical: Canon 300D, EL Nikkor 50 mm f/2.8 reversed on bellows at f/8, with black paper lens shade. Subject is 11 mm in width in the first frame, about 1.4X onto the sensor. 45 frames at 0.010" spacing. Dual halogen fiber illuminator through Kleenex tissue diffuser, 0.6 sec at ISO 100.

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:02 pm

I am getting tired of gray skies

Yeah, and you live on the sunny side of the state!

Mosses are one of those subjects that are nice to see at any level of magnification. The last two posts Ralf has made in the microscope section were of mosses on a "microscopic" level. And when you start looking around at a clump under the stereo scope it's pretty amazing how many creatures call it home.

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 7:47 am

Very nice Rik!

Planapo · Post by **Planapo** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 9:31 am

Very nice indeed!
Fresh and green, immediately quickens my appetite for salad somehow...

But why did you use this lens at f/8? Whereas, if I remember correctly, it is expected to perform best at f/5.6

Wait...

... as it is you Rik, I could think, the answer might be that you've quickly calculated that at this magnification, with the sensor size and pixel size of your camera, and for web presentation anyway, one won't see any difference at all, and thus you've chosen f/8 as this is sufficient, needs less frames for the stack, won't wear the camera down more than necessary and will shorten the stacking time ... Right?!

I wish I could do such calculations more quickly!

--Betty

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:01 am

I've never seen moss this close up before, this makes me want to get one 'leaf' (does moss actually have 'leaves') in front of a microscope objective!

Charlie, I was stacking some lichen yesterday that I'd brought in and I kept seeing some little blighters moving around in the background! I suspected springtails but I didn't manage to actually focus on one so I've no idea!

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:07 am

I'd have used the lens at f22 regardless and then seen the difference.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:11 am

Thanks for the comments, folks!

Laurie, I'm with you on that "objective shot". Maybe I'll see what I can do today.

Betty, I am honored by your imagination!

But the fact is, I shot some test images at f/4, f/5.6, and f/8 and just looked at 'em. The ones at f/4 were less clear, and I couldn't tell the difference between f/5.6 and f/8. So I went with f/8 to save some time and because I speculated it might make the corners a hair better.

Then I tuned back to the forum just in time to see Charlie's advice that "You can use f8 for magnifications up to about 2.5X", so I felt better about my decision...

Normally I would use one of my Olympus bellows lenses for a shot like this. But I wanted a test/demo image shot with a more available lens, so I went with the EL Nikkor for this one.

Using my 80 mm Olympus wouldn't have made much difference in the settings. My notes for the Olympus (based on test images) say that its "sweet spot" is at f/8 for 1:1 and f/5.6 at its highest magnification of about 2.2X. All of those tests were done on a 6.3 Mpixel sensor, and "sweet spot" means the smallest aperture where I couldn't see any degradation. With a higher resolution sensor, the sweet spot might happen at a slightly larger aperture.

--Rik

Aynia · Post by **Aynia** » Mon Feb 16, 2009 11:41 am

I'm with Betty on this one... about the salad!!

Lovely shot(s).