*istDS macro shoot

The lovely sunshine prompted me to find my bellows today. Also, I decided to give my old *istDS a spin. The bellows are the K fitting version, which has the advantage of accepting M42 lenses as well, via a standard adapter. Lenses used were an ancient Takumar 135 and a Pentacon 30. The Takumar permits a long working distance but the Pentacon has to almost touch the subject !

Here it all is .... looks quite impressive



The ants were exploring the daffodils



Probably attracted by the smell from the business end



There were some dried seed husks left standing too





The big acer tree had just opened its first leaves and the tiny blossoms



and this fellow came to see what was going on



The forget-me-nots had just come out too



They look like sugar icing flowers at this magnification. There is a surprising wealth of structure in these tiny flowers. These two were taken with the Pentacon



and this one with the Takumar. The two produce quite different results



Thanks for looking. Comments and criticism welcomed

Shooting the above image

A nice story line - thanks for sharing. And all done without the aid of live-view for focussing! Did this some years back when I had an *istD - which had the advantage over my earlier attempts with a Z1-p film camera in that one could at least review and re-take if necessary!

A magnificent set up, David. Beats me using a K100D with my lovely Pentax M 28mm 3.5 yesterday.

This is what DSLR photography is all about ... The ultimate versatile and cost effective tool. For bang per buck pure quality output it's hard to imagine any better equipment than you've used here. Some great results and very interesting to see the set-up, thanks!