Daisies over Memorial Day

Over Memorial Day weekend, I took a trip out to Springbrook Park to do some family photographs and on the way back through the park, noticed a batch of daisy’s in full bloom. With the new Zeiko’s extension tubes in my camera bag, it was a great opportunity to try them out.

With the Nikon D90 in hand and on my Slik tripod, I used the 18-105mm lense to take these images. The camera was set to AV mode and RAW along with a base ISO of 200 to get the best quality of image. I changed the aperture from low to high to vary the depth of field on what daisies were in focus. I ended up using the 12mm and 20mm extension tubes on this lense as well. Being the first time I used extension tubes, I was amazed at how close I could get to the daisy and still be in focus. Of course, with extension tubes, your depth of field is very limited so one must pay special attention to focus.

The images were processed in ViewNX with very minor adjustments to exposure and shadow/highlight protection. The white balance was changed to direct sunlight and the picture control to my custom landscape-nature settings

Once in PSE8, I then used the cloning tool to clean up some imperfections to the daisy pedals and other areas. Since I enjoy using clipping masks, I processed some of the images into black and white using the VirtualPhotographer plug-in. Clipping masks allowed me to keep the daisy in color while the background was turned to black and white. I also used Jerry Jones textures on just one image this time since my backgrounds were much better then with the alstromeria images.

After taking these daisy images with the extension tubes, I really look forward to more macro work with them!

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New Tools of the Trade

With my interest of taking images of flowers, I decided to order up some new equipment that should be able to help me capture flowers up close and personal. I ordered a set of Zeikos macro extension tubes in three different lengths. The set includes a 12mm, 20mm and 36mm tube that can be used individually or in combination. Extension tubes enable your lens to focus closer than its normal minimum focusing distance which allows you to get much closer to your subject. I look forward to using these on my lenses to see what kind of shots I can get!

I've received the extension tubes and have used them once on some images that have not been posted yet. After having some trouble knowing how close I can focus to my subject, I did some testing inside with a ruler and business card. This allowed me to try different lenses and extension tubes and measure the distance between the lense and the business card. With the Sigma 50-150mm lense and a 36mm extension tube I was focusing at 22" at 150mm while the Nikon 18-105mm and a 36mm extension tube was focusing at 5" at 105mm! This close focus distance allowed me to have just a quarter of the business card filling the viewfinder. This will be fun using the extension tubes on flowers!

Alstromeria and Calla Lily Spring Blossom

With a large wedding reception and brunch being hosted at the Conference Center in mid May, I was able to take home some left over flowers. The beautiful calla lily and the alstromeria were my subjects for these images.

The equipment used was the Nikon D90 and again I used all three Nikon lenses I have after learning that I was able to capture some unique perspectives of flowers on my last shoot. The 70-300mm was used the most followed by the 12-24 mm and 18-105mm. The camera was set to AV mode and RAW along with ISO ranging from 200 to 500. The Gorilla and Slik Pro tripods were used to keep the camera steady. Experimenting with shooting inside on some of these images, I just used a pair of desk lights that I could point at my subject.

This was the first time I made a little “studio” in the basement so the desk lights and a cardboard background was the only thing available. The hardest camera setting to get was the white balance so I shot in RAW so I could adjust it later but the majority of time, left it with what the camera came up with. The nicest thing about shooting inside was no wind which made focusing much easier.

The images were processed in ViewNX with adjustments to the exposure, white balance, picture control and highlight/shadows if needed. My custom landscape-nature picture control was used along with a Top Gear picture control that has been downloaded. Cropping was also done during this step.

Using PSE8, I then used the cloning tool and other techniques to finalize the calla lily and alstromeria images. Because of the cardboard background in my “studio” I used textures for the first time. Textures are a unique way to add a different look to your images. By using them, I believe I improved the look of the images since I was dealing with a boring background.  I used the textures from Jerry Jones at http://shadowhousecreations.blogspot.com/.  Textures were also used on the images taken outside and I found the pollution texture to be to my liking. The opacity of the texture layers were also adjusted to fine tune the post processing.

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