More macro!

I went out again today and took more pictures.  The sky was still very overcast, but I went out in the afternoon, so there was more light.  I took my tripod with me but didn't end up using it because I was walking around so much, and I could generally get sharp "enough" images after a few tries.  

The first thing I happened to photograph was this cute butterfly that kept walking around on the flower and didn't want to be photographed.  

Photo op!

 I got a few more pictures of it, though not any great ones.  

"Cinematic" (ha) crop at 16:9.  I think the antennae is in focus but the rest of the butterfly is not.  Oops.

 

This is my favorite one, even though it's the butterfly butt and it's mostly out of focus.  You can see the scales on the wing and the shallow depth of field creates an interesting effect in my opinion.  I'm amazed at the detail I was able to capture! 

Butterfly butt!

 

That's actually the last one I got before it flew away.  

There weren't many live flowers to photograph, much like yesterday.  

 

This flower was nice though.  

Some sort of daisy.  Still slightly more blurry than I'd like.

Something is eating the eucalyptus trees: 

Yummy eucalyptus leaves!  Don't eat these unless you're a koala, or whatever bug is eating them here.

 

I also re-tried the "use the macro lens as a telephoto lens" thing and had mixed results.  After a lot of modification in Capture One Express (exposure down, contrast way up, brightness up), the images look closer to real life.  I think the contrast is the biggest thing missing from the straight-out-of camera images.  

Super weird to see banana trees in an area with oak/eucalyptus.  Apparently this area had a nursery and they just left some plants when they closed up shop.

Yes, need to clean my sensor.  But also -- look at those brave people!

Still excited to use this lens even more.  I hope that there's better light next weekend.  And in a month or so, monarch butterflies should be migrating and taking their annual break very close to me -- hopefully I can find a time with fewer people to visit in a COVID-friendly way. 

First pictures with a Panagor 90mm, f/2.8, 1:1 macro lens (and "my" Nikon D40)

I have a Nikon D40.  It is a relatively old crop-sensor DSLR (announced in 2006!), and it isn't actually mine.  It's my dad's camera.  But I borrowed it and he hasn't needed it back yet, so it lives with me.  It has a whopping 6.1 MP, can shoot up to 2.5 frames per second, and 3 auto-focus points.  It cannot do video.  

However, it definitely works and takes pictures!  

I've wanted a macro lens for quite a long time.  The only thing stopping me from getting one is the cost of macro lenses.  They are, to put it lightly, incredibly expensive.  And I wasn't sure I wanted to invest a lot of money for a nice lens if I wasn't sure I was going to stick with a Nikon body for the future, since I do want to upgrade to a newer camera soon.  

Two days ago, I found a listing on craigslist for a $95 macro lens, Nikon F-mount.  Too enticing to pass up!  I bought it from the seller today.  

Each of these dead flower buds was about an inch wide!  Not super sharp, yay for unsteady hands.

The lens is totally manual.  Aperture and focus are controlled on the lens, and it's so old that it doesn't communicate with the camera at all.  So images don't save with aperture info, and I also don't get exposure information -- lots of test images are needed. 

Here's the lens fully retracted: 

 

 And here's the lens fully extended.  

My SO made some, ahem, colorful remarks about this lens's ability to elongate so magnificently.  

The markings on the lens are still sort of a mystery to me.  I know some correspond to magnification level, and some appear to be distance to object for focus.  There are still a few I haven't figured out though.  

The focus ring is nice and heavy -- it takes quite a few turns to get from one end to the other though, definitely not something that would be fun to use for a fast-moving subject.  The aperture dial has clicks for half stops as well, and is a little less clicky/heavy as the one on my Rokinon, but still nice to use.  

The lens is in very good condition and works beautifully as a macro lens.  It's a pretty bad telephoto lens, but can produce some passable shots.  Doesn't seem to do portraits well, but would make some interesting photos, I think.  

My main issue in picture-taking is my really shaky hands, and without any stabilization in the lens or in the body, I generally need a very fast shutter speed and very wide aperture to take sharp pictures, plus good light.  (Tripods would help, of course, but they're heavy and slow to set up).  That means very shallow depth of field, and if the subject moves (wind!), the picture gets blurry all over again.  

Right after I picked up the lens, I went out to a fairly secluded area (because COVID) and took some pictures.  It was overcast, and the light disappeared pretty quickly after the first thirty minutes, and it was also pretty breezy, but I did get some nice pictures.  I also got a ton of terrible, blurry pictures.  Have I mentioned my shaky hands? 

 I'm excited to go out again and re-try with better light!  

The very first picture I took (with the "proper" exposure, more or less).  I hadn't bought the lens just yet...

One of the next few, right after I bought the lens!  No blurring added in post, no cropping.  1:1 magnification and slightly blurry, but still awesome.  The plant was a couple feet across and this is just the center.

Dead flowers.

More dead flowers!  Different type this time.

Dead grass.  (Notice a trend?  It's autumn, everything is dead right now).

Using the macro lens as a "regular" lens.  These are the same flowers as in the first picture of dead flowers.

Go Gauchos!  Trying to mimic a telephoto.  This was the sharpest it wanted to get.  Pretty dang fuzzy, even for the D40.

Better attempt at a telephoto lens.  Taken from the top of a hill, ~50 feet away from the birds.

When it rains, it pours

I live in California.  You know, that one state that's constantly on fire and it never rains in?  Yeah, that one.  Rainy season is the winter, but it hasn't rained at all until a few days ago.  And it poured rain.  

Maybe I'm just not used to the rain, and it was just a normal rainstorm.  There wasn't even thunder.  But for three days, the sun was swallowed up by gray rainclouds ranging from light, gentle wisps to huge, puffy dark ones that shrouded the sky.  

Between sessions of intense rain and wind, there were moments when the sun peeked through as if to reassure us it was still there.  My camera accompanied me outside to capture some of the rain.  Photos don't quite give you the feeling of being outside after a rainstorm though.  There's a smell (petrichor, oh that poor overused word!), a feeling of the plants around you relishing their recent, refreshing shower, and a calm quietness that is hard to describe but easy to recognize.  Maybe that's just me though.  

Walking around in the rain is even better, but my mom hates it when I come inside soaked.  Because who needs umbrellas?

Typical shot of water on leaves.

Spiderwebs look awesome when they catch the rain like this.

My favorite shot of the day.

Visiting the Getty

Yesterday my family visited the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  We're down in Irvine, staying with my grandparents, and we had never been before, so we went.  My dad being a great enthusiast of museums also facilitated this trip.

I brought along my camera and new lens (Nikon D40 and Rokinon 14mm 2.8).  I also brought a 35mm prime lens for the pictures, since the Getty's website said non-flash photography was permissible and I wanted pictures of the artwork inside.

I had never seen the museum itself, and honestly I would have been happy walking around the outside and on the grounds for the entire day.  The museum is situated at the top of a hill overlooking Los Angeles, and is a very modern-looking, artsy building.

I got a lot of pictures of just the building with my new lens.  My mom was rather unimpressed with the shots...

35mm

35mm

35mm

35mm

35mm

14mm

The lines are clean and the building looks amazing from basically every angle.

The views of Los Angeles were really good as well.  All of these were taken with the 14mm.

From the back of the Getty, looking out at the city.  Mmm, smog.

Walking back down.  We could all see where the fire burned.  Didn't look like any houses got burned!

And of course, the art was why we came in the first place.

I took a lot of pictures, but didn't take pictures of the artist name/context for the work...

What I do remember is my favorite one, Renoir's La Promenade.

Renoir's La Promenade.

At the time he painted it, he was studying with Monet, so his paintings took on a more impressionist feeling.  Which was a perfect way to express the dappled light, I think.

And there were a few Monets.

Haystacks!  I think the caption called them Wheatstacks though.

A classically Monet painting -- haystacks.  These were in the light of a winter morning, I think.

We also ate lunch in the museum cafe.  It was very, very expensive.  The upstairs restaurant charged about $35 per plate of food, and just an appetizer was $15.  The cafe downstairs was cheaper, but still exorbitant for the food you got.

Unfortunately I was hungry from a small breakfast and four hours of walking and photographing and I needed to eat there...  My brother waited till we went to Chik Fil A and got about the same amount of food for less than half the price!

New camera lens (Rokinon 14mm, f2.8 Nikon AE)

Last weekend was Black Friday, and I've had my eyes on this lens for months.  I enjoy photography, especially astrophotography and macro photography.  But since I'm in college, money isn't something I can just throw around.  

The price dropped by a full hundred dollars on Black Friday for the Nikon version of the lens, which was perfect.  I couldn't resist buying it (according to camelcamelcamel, it was the lowest price it had been in two years).  

Even though finals are approaching and there are a lot of projects/tests that need my attention, I couldn't help but take some pictures with it.  

There's a highway overpass next to my boyfriend's apartment, and we walked over there to get some long exposures.  It was very, very cold and he complained the entire time.  I was too excited to be cold, I think.  I've never taken long exposures of the highway before, but I've always wanted to.  

I had issues with changing the aperture of the lens, so all the pictures are taken at f22...  Which is ridiculous for nighttime photos as larger apertures are definitely preferred.  The lens has a focus and aperture ring, but you must leave the aperture ring at f22, otherwise you'll get an EE error.  So you have to control the aperture via the camera body -- a very odd design choice in my opinion.  Why include a manual aperture ring if it is unusable?

In any case, I figured all that out once I got back inside, and after some googling.  

It might be because my camera is kind of old (Nikon D40, first came out in 2006 or 2007).  Amazon reviews don't really mention the issue so most other people might not have it.  Or they weren't expecting/didn't want a fully manual lens like me.  

f22, 10 seconds.  The detail on the highway blew me away.

f22, 15 seconds.  Bright lights = stars!

f22, 30 seconds.  Can you see the mustache distortion?

Three of my favorite pictures of the night.  I'm really happy with this lens.  I can't wait for finals week to be over so I can take it out and spend all night capturing the stars.  I might also walk around campus and take pictures of everything once people clear out.