Monday, September 21, 2009

Solar Imaging Session - September 18, 2009

Hello:


I was able to find time to view the Sun before I went to work. The Sun was a bit silent with no sunspots in white light as well as a small eruptive prominence that was visible near Sun's limb.


Wednesday, September 9, 2009

MY BASIC MACROPHOTOGRAPHY

Hello:

With the bad weather continuing to haunt me for months, I have take special interest into insect photography whic means photographing the insects in closeup range. This macrophotography is the best term for this field.

I was plannign right away to get a good macro lens such as the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 or the specialized MP-E65mm f/2.8, my friends Zed told me not to buy right away as he has 3 macro lenses that he can lend me to test out first before purchasing. They include the 50mm, 100mm and 180mm macro lenses and we plan t test them out on a weekend in the weeks to come.

So for now, Im just using closeup lenses as sell as inverted lens to try out this new field for me. One thing I found out with macro imaging is that the Depth of Field (DOF) is really darn shallow that one can find it hard to even get a perfectly focused shot of an insect from head to body or legs! So one has to compromise a little to image what is important on that part of the insect :(

With the Canon inverted lens, I cant control the aperture so Im forced to use whatever opeing the lens has thus the DOF is really a pain... nevertheless, afer a few days of work, I have adjusted mayself to accept the shallow DOF of an inverted lens until maybe when I have the money to gee myself either the 100mm or the MPE.

Some of my test insect images can be viewed at http://www.astrophotophils.com/images/macro.html . Hopefully, i can improve my work in the days to come, so practice , practice, practice for me :)