It’s been a while since I did my last photo hunting session. However, the sun was finally up that day and so myself and a friend decided to go to Hampton beach and walk along the beach to Middle Brighton, snapping possible objects and sceneries along the way. It was quite a bit of walk, but the weather was very nice and photography is always a fun thing for me. I’m glad to say that there are  quite a few good shots that I can add to my gallery today.

The gear that I brought with me  was my Nikon D300s, 90mm macro lens, 70-300mm telephoto lens and my trusty 18-50mm lens. Along with all the gear I also brought my Holga, but obviously it’ll take a while to develop the negative since no one seems to to 1 hour development anymore these days. There were a lot of things that can be taken on that day, the weather was very nice that it was perfect to snap pictures. The light wasn’t too harsh but not dark either, it’s like having a giant softbox illuminating all the objects.

This resulted in great lighting condition to take macro photos such as the one on the left (click on the image to show larger size), there  is not a hint of harsh light which I really dislike in macros. The photo was taken using the 90mm macro lens, handheld with manual focusing. The original flower was quite small, however as with any macro photography, it always pays to have a closer look at the things around you. Such as the dried (seed pods?) in the gallery below or the photo of seeds which is my personal favorite in this gallery.

When walking around places like the beach and taking photos of the scenery, it always pay to have both wide angle lens and telephoto lens. Most of the sailing boats photos were taken using the wide angle lens, however the boat with the orange sail in the gallery below were taken using the 300mm lens. The photo of the dog was also taken using the telephoto lens, obviously there was no way to come closer without drenching the equipments. I had to actually switch the telephoto lens to manual focus mode in order to shoot the dog properly since the focusing system was not fast enough (it’s an older lens).

The Processing Tools

This is an interesting portion of the post that I wanted to discuss. I have recently migrate my desktop into a Linux system since I’m a software engineer and it’s really so much easier to develop on it. However, image editing in Linux is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, even for me. I remember a few years ago, opening RAW images and processing it with the available open source programs was really difficult.

As it turned out, there are really good software these days that one can use under the Linux environment to organize RAW files and edit them. All the images in this post’s gallery are edited under a Linux system. The setup that I have are: Ubuntu 10.10, RawTherapee 3.0 alpha for RAW files processing and Gimp 2.7. Granted both of the image processing software are on it’s development stage and by no means stable, however I have no issues whatsoever editing all of these images today. I think when the two software matures, they will be great. RawTherapee is very intuitive, reminds me a lot of Adobe Lightroom and it’s very efficient and quick. Gimp 2.7 although not available through the normal download has a lot of user interface improvements, the one that I love most is the single window mode, no more 3 separate windows open together (you’ll have this “issue” on Gimp 2.6).

If anyone is interested to get the tools, here are the ways, again, the software versions that I listed are on development, so proceed with caution:

RawTherapee: available via software center

Gimp 2.7: You will have to add the development repository first, then run the install command

remove any other versions of gimp

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gimp

The Gallery

These are the photos that I took during my end of year holiday trip. Hopefully these images can brighten your days.

The images will open on a new page, then all you have to do is right click and save as. Enjoy!

Edit: In the spirit of learning, I’ll add a bit more information of how I shot these photos.

These photos were shot using my trusty Nikon D300s with 90mm macro lens (Tamron), no tripod, just steady hands. Post processing was done on the go with Nikon View NX and GIMP, yep, Adobe Photoshop won’t run on my little travel netbook but the results were just as good.

If you own an SLR Camera and an existing lens:

You can use magnification lenses for macro photography if you already own an existing lens. This is by far the cheapest possible solution to get macro shots.

Magnification Lens

Magnification Lens

The amount of magnification with this lenses varies with their power. The bigger the number the stronger the magnification. In the image example above I have the +1 lens coupled with a +3 lens which makes up to +4 magnification.

There are trade-offs when using these lenses however:

1. The more magnification lenses you put in front of your lens, the less light getting through the lens. Which means your camera speed will be lower than normal. Say in a certain condition you have 1/100s speed, when you screw on these lenses you might end up with 1/60s speed.
2. The depth of field will be shallower than a true macro lens. With these lenses its slightly harder to get the background of the object sharper without losing the speed.

As I said previously, this is the most affordable quality solution.

If you are planning and have the budget to get a new lens:

Dedicated Macro Lens

Then get the true macro lens. These lenses offer very high magnification and incredible detailed result. Depending on your budget, you might want to look at third party providers as well. I use Tamron macro lenses myself and to date I have been very satisfied with its results.

With this lenses, you will have full control of the aperture, speed and focus. Many of these lenses have fixed focal lens, meaning that you will not have an option to zoom in or out. That’s okay, considering you don’t get that far or close from your macro subject most of the time.

If you want to get a semi-slr:

Macro in Compact Camera

Don’t forget to consider and semi SLR camera with macro capability. My old DiMage A1 did very good macro before I switched to the SLR. It gave good details when printed up to A4, above A4 however we might start to see the compression noise. This is because of the nature of Semi-SLR that has smaller image sensor than the true SLR. Ont he other hand, as technology grows, the semi SLRs are getting better and better in its quality. Best way to find out is always to check out the sample shots for a particular camera.

Reverse lens technique:

This a technique that can also be explored if you feel adventurous. Basically you use the other end of your lens to be attached to the camera body, then you will get massive amount of magnification. Of course you will have to buy the converter to do this. The downside of this technique and why I never use this as my permanent solution is that you might get your bottom end of your lens (the body connector part) scratched.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to start doing macro shots. I wouldn’t recommend those macro settings in a compact pocket camera however because of their lack of control and their depth of field is never shallow enough.

So what can we expect from this lens?

First thing, this is a 1:1 Macro lens, meaning that it is capable of creating 1:1 image reproduction of the actual object; although if the “limit switch” (not shown in this picture) is turned off, you can get much closer than 1:1 scale. I have been testing this lens for a while and quite please with the resulting images, the depth of field is great and the sharpness of the resulting image is very pleasing. On the right is an example of a necklace pendant taken using this lens under studio lights.

More on the specs…

One of the most important spec is the focal length. This camera came with a fixed focal length at 90mm, meaning there’s no zoom in and out. Some might disagree however I think when I’m photographing outdoor with this lens for non product object, such as a person, it forces me to be more creative and to make the most out of the available space at the time of the shoot. So with this I can also say that this lens is not just for close-ups, instead can be a great companion for a portrait shoot.

Another interesting aspect of this lens is that availability of a manual aperture ring, a feature that is not very common in the era of digital, in particular with less-expensive lens like this one. Of course with the digital SLR camera the ring is not being used very much however with my F-801s film that does not support electronic aperture ring, the manual ring is a handy addition.

Lastly and handy

The last prominent and most handy feature of this lens is the AF (Auto Focus) and M (Manual Focus) switch, in order to switch to and fro between those two, all I have to do is just pulling or pushing the focusing ring. Notice that you can see a blue “M” and white “AF” writing on the lens, that’s where the focusing ring would “clicks” in. So there’s no more fiddling around with the small on camera body AF/MF switch. This is especially great when taking picture and the auto-focus won’t focus properly.

So why is there any catch with the half price of Nikkor?

Alhough this lens is one of the sturdy lens, compared to the Nikkor it feels more plasticky and in addition the focussing speed is slower than the nikkor lens. However eventhough I knew these things existed, they didn’t threw me off my decision to get this lens. As long as it focuses well, takes 1:1 macro reproduction, able to productng clear and high quality image, its all good. The sturdiness at this point is enough for me, after all, I don’t intent to throw my lens to the floor.

All in all this is a great lens!

I have to say that I’m very glad that I get this one, and it’ll be useful for years to come So if you’re getting a macro lens, consider this one!