Extreme Macro Monday
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Portion of a Kleenex box at 10x life. Good old fashioned dot matrix printing.
Extreme Macro Monday
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Two screws side by side at 10x life. Black and white treatment.
Extreme Macro Monday
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Head of a screw at 10x life. At this magnification movement is your enemy.
Extreme Macro Monday
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In trying my hand at extreme Macro (4x-10x life) with a microscope lens and a Laowa 2.5-5x lens, some of the results have been quite unusual. This is a screw head at 10x, the faint lines around it mean there was some movement in the stacked exposures (fortuitous error).
Extreme Macro Monday
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Sliced carrot at 5x like. Looks more like a cliff at golden hour.
Extreme Macro Monday
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Every week for the next little while I will be posting an extreme macro image, in the range of 4x to 10x life size. In this case, the photo is a 10x life size shot of the pointy end of a screwdriver and makes for interesting texture. 10x magnification was achieved with a microscope lens at the end of a tube lens attached to a Fuji X camera. For more info: http://extreme-macro.co.uk/ and https://www.wemacro.com/
Not Aztec Pottery (Three Photographs)
I have been fascinated with macro photography for a long time now. I wanted to move on to Microscope Photography, but that seemed a little ambitious. I have a Laowa 2.5-5x lens and I have found even with an adapter (Nikon to Fuji) it is excellent. However, the suggestion from experts I have read is that one should use microscope lenses above 3X. Last year I invested in Wemacro’s focusing rail, and was using the Laowa and some Nikon bellows. I got some good shots as some of you will have seen. I have since added Wemacro’s tube lens and added 4X and 10x microscope lenses to the mix. The photos you see here at 4x life using a microscope lens are of a circuit board from an old hard drive. It’s one way of getting very nice abstract photographs. More to come.
The Common Kitchen Sponge (Two Photographs)
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I was pretty sure that the sponge would make for an interesting subject. I did not realize it would be so fluid. Only about one in three tries at this level of magnification work out. In some cases I have taken a hundred shots on an educated guess of the outcome with mixed results.
Photography is an Art Form (Two Photographs)
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I am a firm believer that photography is an art form and that you can be very creative in this medium. It’s one of the reasons I decided to try extreme macro, the abstracts and designs are endless. In this case an old tape measure.
Sunflower Visit
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You could never call this a photo of a sunflower, though that was what I was after. The Japanese beetle photobombed my composition.
Not a meteor
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Actually it’s the head of match. I’d have lit it but was worried about my gear, instead I went for dramatic lighting.
More Pop Art
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I am still working at perfecting my 5x life macro skills, and of course flat objects are easier than objects with depth that require focus stacking. These are from some tea packaging and a Kleenex box.
Cabbage White
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Every nature photography article I have ever read talks about the importance of eyes. When it comes to butterflies, frogs and other nature subjects, the eyes are amazing in color.
Not Graffiti (Two Photographs)
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The designs on most coloured cardboard packaging like Kleenex boxes are dot matrix, up close it’s just dots and ink bleeds. I thought it would make good modern abstract art.
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Bluenose (Two Photograhs)
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This is a detail from a Canadian dime, it shows a portion of the deck of the Bluenose Schooner at 5:1. The dime at 1:1 is below.
Old 43 and 45 (Two Photographs)
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Details of wartime Canadian nickels. Given shortages in some metals, coins were made of different mixtures of metals left over from the demands of the war effort.
Wood (Two Photographs)
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This is a continuation of my work at 5:1 (at that magnification light and sharpness are a challenge). The first photo is of a pencil shaving and the second is of a scratch in a wooden spatula.
Lessons Learned (Two Photographs)
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As I continue to try my hand at extreme macro I am learning quite a bit, for example: microns are also called UMs, and flowers out of water and hit by many flashes wilt very quickly. From these two lessons, come these rather abstract photos of fresh flowers. As the shots for stacking and combining were taken, the flowers entered a surreal and abstract zone that turned out quite well to my eye. But technically it was a disaster.
Statue by Silas Qayaqjuaq (Two Photographs)
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I have long admired Silas’s work and it’s as fine up close as sitting on the table in our living room. His sculptures are often small but very animated, really beautiful work. I used this piece to experiment with lighting and my bellows (totally manual). The full sculpture is below.
Needles and Chilis To Beat the Pandemic Boredom (Two Photographs)b
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My efforts at true macro continue, finding subjects to photograph can be challenging. I began by pinning the chili to cork so it was held in mid air. After several hours of fiddling with lights I got a shot of the chili, and then more time was spent in Photoshop erasing the pins and learning more about how to fix backgrounds. The needle also took the larger part of the day. I have great close up vision but had a hard time seeing the hole in the needle to centre it on the camera. Both of these photographs are efforts at learning what works and doesn’t in true macro. It’s early days.
Macro Gear
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My preferred gear, for many years, when shooting insects was my Nikon, a 105mm macro lens, an extension and a soft box on camera with flash. This worked well for insects in the wild. But I rarely if ever took photos at life size 1:1. During the pandemic I am avoiding the parks, too many people. From previous experiments I had an original Nikon bellows, and a really good 50mm Nikon enlarger lens (recommended by http://extreme-macro.co.uk/) but I had a hard time getting good results with that and a generic focusing rail. It was clear I needed to find another way. The photo here is of a small part of a candy wrapper . My new set up has the bellows automated on a macro rail (wemacro rail and stand). That and some specialized software looks much more promising.
Macro
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This seashell was taken with stacked shots at larger than life size. There are three types of macro: 1) pseudo macro, what most of us call macro but is really close-up photography. It seldom if ever gets to life size shots. 2) Macro, the real thing, This results in photos where small things are larger than life (e.g. over 1:1), and then there is extreme macro where images are 5 times life or more. This photo is are over 1:1, less than a centimetre of shell filling the frame (cropping does not change magnification). It’s a project to help avoid boredom during the pandemic. I don’t pretend to be an expert. I have had many failures and still working for the best results.
How much magnification? (Two Photographs)
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I am told that to get to 10x life size, a microscope and loan from the Government is required. 3-5x life size is a fairly good extreme to begin with. My bellows with a 50mm enlarger lens, and a 24mm extension tube can manage about 4:1. To get some context, here are details of Canadian and US dimes. Specifically the Queen’s profile and Roosevelt’s ear.
That Bee (Two Photographs)
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Another sweat bee, doing its thing and taking off. Because of their colour and antics they are the most popular type of bee in our local woods. They are best found in late summer when they are looking for their final meals of the season.
Victor Rakmil Photography 