IFLC Week 1 Day 5

My goal for practicing for the macro class was to go through one booklet per week. I feel like I'm rushing a bit this first week, but thought I'd get through it just fine. I read ahead in the 2nd discovery book and realized that to really get as much out of this class as I can, I have to spend more than 1 week per booklet. I don't have nearly enough available time to spend practicing. Even though I will be done with the teaching part of the class in just over 2 weeks, I plan on continuing with the course structure until I'm done. With a lot of nights spent working, I don't know how long it will take. Obviously I have a lifetime to learn and take photos. There is no need to rush. With that said, instead of moving ahead tonight, I decided to spend a bit more time on some of the previous concepts for the week.

I know at this point, I'm not supposed to be using flash yet. I added the earlier in the night to take some shots of my daughter. There was a setting that was wrong that I couldn't figure out how to fix. So I reset it and was able to get full strength on my flash again. Because of that, I had to tackle my old friend again. I still don't fully know what I'm doing with the flash, but even the mostly auto settings I use helps. I took this shot with a very narrow f/4.2 getting only 1 droplet in focus.


I then closed down to f/13 to get more of the droplets in focus.


Keeping the flash on, I moved outside. It was nearly dark, but I wanted to see what I could do with the flash. Since it was so dark (and I'm not very good hitting my focus yet), I missed this shot.


I moved to another flower using my widest aperture, I tried to shoot this flower a bit different than I had before. The shot looked brighter on the back of my camera than it does here. Had I see it was this dark I would've boosted my exposure a bit.


This is the same shot, but I hit my focus a bit better as I was aiming for the middle.


I then decided to stop using the flash and moved to the garage to shoot some stuff. I worked a bit on selective focus. I had to bump the ISO up to 800 to have a chance to get this shot. The shutter speed was still slower than I wanted at 1/50 second which is too slow for me. I tried to get the cable in focus and actually got it.


Staying at my widest aperture I move on to the week lock to work on planing and paralleling. Here I was only able to get 1 tiny bit in focus.


Moving more towards parallel, I was able to get more in focus


I then did a bit more work on depth of field. I added an extra lamp and was able to get back down to ISO 200. I shot this wire brush wide open to only get the end of 1 bristle in focus.


Stopping down to f/14, I had to bump the ISO back up to 800. This allowed me to get slightly more depth of field.


For this last shot, I decided to try play a bit. I added the flash and closed down the aperture all the way to f/57. The room was a bit dark too. So it was difficult to find exactly where the perfect focus was. I thought the tiny aperture would help, but it looks slightly off. Obviously I needed more light.


I'm realizing these shots I export from lightroom appear to be a bit darker than the jpgs that come out of the camera. I'm comparing what's on flickr to what I have on my computer and flickr is definitely a touch darker. I still seem to be off on a lot of the exposures, but this could be part of the reason for me thinking I'm closer. Even more interesting, after I posted this blog, I open it up just to make sure all the shots were there and I see that the images here are brighter than I currently see them on flickr. Very interesting. Maybe my shots haven't been quite as under exposed as I thought and they are closer to what I'm actually seeing when I review them on the camera. That would sure be helpful.

IFLC Week 1 Day 4

Work was too crazy last night. and I didn't get the opportunity to shoot anything. After reviewing some of the other incredible shots I see people posting, I'm almost ashamed to show my work anywhere. I guess we all have to learn. Maybe I should have started with a more beginner course instead, but I love macro photography and I am learning. That's the important thing. I was able to spend some time again today. I took some shots using selective focus and shots working on depth of field playing with small and large apertures. I even spent a little time applying some of the concepts I have learned and took a few shots using a non-macro lens to play with minimum focus distance to see depth of field. Most of the shots are not very exciting as I'm working on concepts rather than creating art. Hopefully in the end I'll be able to create some things I'm proud of.

I got to take a few shots in the day light today. I played a bit with depth of field. I took this shot at f/5. I am still very unsteady when shooting. I need to be more steady to try hold where I'm aiming my focus.


I close the aperture down to f/10 and back off a bit from minimum focus distance to get more in focus this time.


I decided to try tackling the inside plant again from the other night. I had my flash on the camera and it was mostly blocked by a leaf. I started at f/4.5 and missed the focus. I guess this is a bit over exposed too.


I then dropped down to f/22 with the flash to get the entire pod in focus. I finally hit my focus (thank you f/22). This is a bit underexposed, but I like the affect. Cool shot, but I can't take credit for the final product since this wasn't my goal.


I decided to take a few shots working on selective focus. It was quite dark in the house. I added an extra lamp to try giving a bit more light on the subjects. It helped some, but set camera on the counter to shoot this at 1/50th of a second.


Here I moved the focus to the top book.


I then realized I had been using auto white balance for everything up until this point. I'm not very familiar with this setting, but changed it to the light bulb (I guess I need to learn light temperatures betters) and retook the last 2 shots. Much better.


...and much better.


I then moved back to playing with the aperture and using the same lamp to add extra light. This is f/5.


And f/13. I had to bump the ISO up to 800 as I was back to hand holding these last 2 shots. Since the lens is 105 mm, I tried to keep the shutter speed to a minimum of 1/100th of a second.


A light shower was off and on so I took a couple more shots outside to get some water on the leaves. I left the ISO at 800 in order to keep my shutter speed over 100. This one was at 1/125s at f/13. At this point, I'm a bit random with my aperture. I don't really have a feel for much of anything. I like the how this shot ended up, but I guess I didn't give it a thorough analysis before shooting to know exactly what I was trying to capture.


I opened the aperture all the way to f/5 at the minimum focus distance again for this shot. I was trying to focus on the rain drops and missed a bit.


I hope to spend more time tomorrow playing with the different apertures again. I need to get a better feel for them. I am also quickly coming to the realization that the more I learn and shoot, the more I don't know.

IFLC Day Two

Today I get started on practicing some of the basics of macro shooting. Unfortunately, I am severely limited by time. For me, family comes first. So this hobby will always come after them. My goal is to spend at least a little amount of time dedicated to this every day. That means I don't usually get a chance to shoot until later in the evening and for the most part limits me to inside shots. For the most part, I am pretty new to photography. I have done a bit here and there, but it's usually quickly getting shot of my daughter and definitely not designing nor composing anything. I have done very little with manually setting everything on the camera. As you will see later, I have much to learn.

I decided I will use my 105mm macro lens for most of my shooting during these lessons. The first thing to practice is planing. I set my focus to the minimal focus distance and took this shot of a piece of paper. The depth of field is so shallow, I'm unable to get the entire line in focus. My lights is so poor, I had to set my camera down in order to shoot at 1/15 of second with no flash.


Here's another example shooting 1 line and being unable to get the entire work in focus. Apparently I zoomed out a bit because this was at f/4.8 while the first shot was f/5.


In an effort to get the entire sentence in focus, I closed down to f/13. Still in the same light this was shot at 1/2 a second.


I didn't have much time, but felt like I wanted to shoot something for the next lesson as well to give an idea of what I was shooting. I moved my plane and tried to shoot parallel to my subject to get the entire area in focus even though I was shooting at f/5. A lot more was in focus, but I missed being completely parallel since part of this is out of focus. Since there was no chance of hand holding this at a shutter speed of 1/2 a second and tripods are not high on the recommendation list at IFLC, I decided to add a flash. Even though I'm not very experienced with it, it did help. I was leaning over and unsupported, so I bumped the shutter speed all the way up to 1/320 to try keep the blur away.


That was going to be it, but I noticed a plant starting to bloom (I think). I took some shots of this plant last year using a tripod and ended up stacking a load of photos using Photoshop to get the entire thing in focus. I tried to use some of my new knowledge to hand hold the shot and use the same attached flash from the last shot. Unfortunately, I did not succeed. This was shot at f/22 in a pretty dark room. I knew it was dark, but it didn't look nearly this dark in the camera preview.


I recomposed and missed again.


As I said, these didn't look nearly so dark in the camera, but I thought the focus was still to shallow at f/22. So I jumped down to f/57. Oddly enough, my lens says the max I can shoot is f/32. So I'm not sure why I was able to close all the way down to 57 for this shot. It's unfortunate this is so dark because I really like this shot. Also I would've like this to be composed slightly different, but for me, this would have been a good one.


I know the goal is to use unedited photos, but I wanted to see how this shot could've looked with a bit more light. So using Lightroom I bumped up my exposure and added some clarity and some slight noise reduction to reduce some of the newly added noise. Too had I had missed this shot.


Lesson learned here is that I really need to work on my flash work since most of my opportunities for photographing are in low light. Low light and macro are not the best combination. I'm trying to pace myself, but with the things you can make and shoot while doing macro are exciting. The goal is to learn and grow while taking this class. So I will stick to the plan and practice, practice, practice.

IFLC Day One

Well, it's been a long time since I posted anything here. Life has been very busy. Work is crazier than ever these days and I really have no spare time. I figured the best thing to do would be to devote more time to a hobby I am interested in. Ok, maybe not the smartest timing, but it is something I've been wanting to do for some time now. I signed up for my first photography course. It's called Macro and Close-Up Photography and taught by Robin and Rodney Deutschmann of In Focus Learning Center. I will do my best to keep this page up to date with my progress over the next few weeks. My days and nights are already busy. So adding time to take photos, post them and blog about my progress will be unlikely. I'll do what I can.

On to the first day. I started with my 50mm 1.8 wide open to work on identifying the minimum focus distance. At 1.8, the focus plane is quite shallow and you have to be careful to get your subject in focus. The buttery background is pretty amazing though.

I like this one a lot. The flower really stands out.


This one is pretty boring.


I like the way the purple stands out on the dark green background.


I go back and forth on this one. I think I like it.


Now I add some extension tubes to really reduce the minimum focus distance. With the tubes on, the focus is so incredibly shallow, not much is in focus. On top of that, I missed the mark on every shot. So nothing worthwhile is in focus anyway.

This one had promise. I was hoping to get the water droplet in focus to get a great reflection. With my untrained hand and eye, the wind and the extension tubes on, I missed it.


We were instructed to keep the lens wide open. So getting much in focus was impossible. I was trying to get the center of the flower in focus and I missed again.


Same as the last one, but off even more.


Another missed water droplet.


A cool flower that I really missed.


Umm, not so much. I kept all my shots from class in here. Even this.


I decided to deviate from the instructions and stop down a bit to 4.5. As you can see, much more was in focus. I still missed the mark a bit, but had more flexibility being at 4.5. Stopping down even more (and of course changing the composition a bit) could have made this a pretty nice shot.


Tried to get really close with the extension tubes and forgot to change my exposure from the previous shot. Bummer.


I changed the exposure for this shot, but missed the focus mark yet again. I should have modified my plane just a bit to give me a better show of getting the fly and flower in focus.


After I got home, I put on my 105mm macro lens and took some shots of the flowers around the house. I gave myself the option to not shoot wide open to get some things in focus. I missed the mark on these shots too, but with the closed down aperture, they turned out better.

I suspect that after week 3 of this class, this shot here will turn out really great. The focus and shadows will be much improved. I shot this at f10 and it turned out ok.


I went to f16 on the next 3 shots and got even more in focus.


Similar.


This had a good composition change, but not sure I went enough. Of course, this needs flash help too, but I'm not there yet.


I moved on to a new type of flower and took a few shots from different distances. I took more than 3 and ditched the ones that really missed the mark or were too identical to what you see here.






I moved on to a calla lily next to the house. It wasn't as bright there so I was more limited in my shutter speed. The wind wasn't blowing as much so it was a bit more forgiving there. I kept the shutter speed to a minimum of 1/200 and played around with the aperture. This was at 7.1.


I moved in a bit closer and went to f11.


Then I got really close, but had to open back up to 8 because of the light. Obviously this would have benefited from a much smaller aperture, but I didn't have any more light to add.


So that's it from day one. I will try to get some photos taken and maybe posted throughout the week. This should be fun.