OK I couldn't resist it. I work on gannets and handle them to band and measure, so I can get quite close. This is an image of a the eye of a full-grown chick made with the 100/2.8 macro. If you are wondering, I have a special project to try to document the effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on gannets, and I census the North American population (all in Canada) every 5 years. I have small devices on 20 birds which I will recover this year and find out exactly where they went.
I cropped to about 60% of original size and sharpened. I suppose I should have used a smaller aperture to obtain better depth of field.
Date: 24 September, 2010, Time: 1253h
Model: Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Lens: EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM, 100 mm
Program: Aperture Priority
ISO 800, 1/200s, f/7.1
Exp. comp.: 0.0
Flash: off
Cool! Slap on some extention tubes and you can get an extreme closeup of you in the eye of the gannet!! I see that you would have wanted more DOF for the feathers above the eye, but I am rather captivated by the center of the image so no biggie.
Out of 20 devices do you anticipate recovering them all?
Hi Daniel- Gannets are very site-tenacious, meaning most come back to the same nest every year. If the mortality due to the oil has not been too high I should get 15+ back.
I'm not sure I like my reflection in the eye but there was not a lot I could do about it at the time.
BTW I just remembered that I put up another in this series a few months ago in this or another forum (could have been ETL). Anyway, this is not the same image and as I said, I couldn't resist with the theme!
Looks like the left half the eye skin is OOF, but all in all this is amazing. The reflection in the eye is just over the top. Did you aim for that, or was it just luck?
It's interesting, I would rather the reflection wasn't there so that it didn't distract from the eye. Anyway, I guess people like it! I was trying to avoid the reflection but the way we were holding the bird and the position of the sun meant I couldn't move from where I was.
What really struck me when I saw the image first was the "fibrous" structures in the iris, which seem to provide the colour, and how the "fibres" thin out around the edge.
Theme- extreme closeup
Reply With Quote
I see that you would have wanted more DOF for the feathers above the eye, but I am rather captivated by the center of the image so no biggie.
