No Aphids On My Apple

[Mitch Haimov]

Went into the kitchen to get an apple and found it under guard:



So I made a few images then took the lady beetle to a plant outside. My goal in selecting the POV for this one was to have the eye an antenna, some legs, and the near parts of the head, pronotum ("shell" behind head, more properly upper surface of prothorax), and elytra (wing cover, itself a modified wing) sharp. I also rotated the camera a bit CW to increase the angle of the composition. BG is a brownish plastic bag I put right behind the apple.

5DIII, 65 mm macro lens at 4.5:1, macro twin flash (diffused), hand held, f/14 at 1/200 sec and ISO 200.

All comments and suggestions welcome

[shane shacaluga]

Very nice detail on the eye an antena as you state. Good move on adding the background

Did you burn some flash reflection on the closest wing cover or is that the colour from the diffuser?

How did yiu achieve such high magnification with the 60mm?

TFS

[Jonathan Ashton]

A fine job Mitch, I like the angle of view and the techs look very good indeed. I am not familiar with such high magnification but I wonder if a tripod and more DOF would have produced an even better image?. I bet you are going to say he never kept still for more than a couple of seconds!!

[Mitch Haimov]

Thanks, Shane & Jonathan

Shane: You are, indeed, seeing a reflection of one of the diffusers. As for the high magnification, this is a specialized high-mag lens from Canon that does not focus to infinity. Actually, it will not focus on anything more than a couple of inches or so beyond the front of the lens. Focused all the way "out" it is at 1:1. From there, the focus ring turns and turns and turns...all the way in to 5:1. You can think of it as a fixed-focus 65mm lens with a large, variable extension tube (65mm-325mm) built in. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there is no similar lens available for any other manufacturer's camera bodies.

Jonathan: Actually, a tripod might have been feasible with this one--was a fairly tolerant subject until I moved it from its chosen perch. Getting the tripod positioned just so probably would have been a pain (millimeters matter here) but possible. However, the gain in DOF would have been negligible--this lens tops out at f/16 and I was already at f/14. Actually, changing to f/16 would have been ok for hand holding with the flash, too. Especially since I was at ISO 200 and could have bumped that up. On the other hand, all I have read about using this lens is that f/14 is as small an aperture as should be used; that diffraction is substantially worse at f/16 than f/14. (Some sources say not to go beyond f/8 at 4:1 and above and prefer f/5.6, but I am convinced that they are attributing motion blur to diffraction.) I should do my own testing on that but haven't yet.

[Diane Miller]

This is simply wonderful!! The DOF works for me here, because the important parts are so beautifully sharp, and the focus falloff is so smooth.

If it were mine, I'd trim some off the top, halfway to its back, to balance the tightness on the bottom and left.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Mitch. Looks like you're getting pretty good with this lens! Very good job getting the key elements within your minute DOF at 4.5:1 - and sharp too. At this magnification (as you know), the viewfinder becomes rather dark so just determining when something is in focus is a challenge. Your flash diffusion seems to be working quite well and I like the smooth foreground and background plus the low shooting angle. Very nicely done!

[Mitch Haimov]

Thanks for your kind words and suggestion, Diane! I agree that your proposed crop would also work, but I personally prefer the "down in the corner" composition.

Thank you, Steve! This is one of those rare cases when something turned out to be easier than expected. From what I had read prior to taking the plunge I anticipated quite a steep learning curve before getting usable images. While this is certainly not the easiest form of photograph, I have been pleasantly surprised with what I have been able to achieve early on the process of experimenting with this rig. Of course, some images come out with the focus not quite where I intended, but I can live with that. Without question, the hardest aspects of working at high magnifications are first finding the subject in the viewfinder and discerning sharp focus through the viewfinder. I suppose live view could help with the latter when using a tripod, but that isn't the way I've been working.

[Jason Stander]

Excellent Mitch... perfect detail and exposure... love the angle... agree with Steve on fg and bg... overall all compliments each other very well... lloks like you are getting the hang of the MPE... what are you diffusing with????... WD Mitch!

[Mitch Haimov]

Thanks, Jason. I'm using a pair of Gary Fong Puffers hot glued to a pair of Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce diffusers. John Kimbler (aka dalantech) has video and written descriptions on his blog (http://nocroppingzone.blogspot.com). And some fine macro photography.