Flower

Here's the story:
We had a nice light rain today and I decided to hike the local woods to see if there were any early bloomers... hoping for trilliums (a little too early).
But I found quite a few of these buttercup type flowers named Marsh Marigold (caltha pulustris).
They are found in swamps, marshes, meadows and brooks. I found this one in a swamp.
I laid out my trusty vinyl ground sheet to lay on in the muck, and snapped on my 135mm 2.5 Takumar lens with 60mm of extension tubes... unfortunately it didn't give me the right framing and DOF I was looking for so I used my 50mm f/1.7 lens on the extension tubes.
PERFECT!
I inverted the centre column on my tripod to shoot upside down and got right down in the wet! (the ground sheet was flooded by then)
The flower was millimeters from the lens.. but the look was exactly what I wanted.
I stopped the lens down a couple clicks just to get this shallow of a DOF.

Pentax *istD
1/60 sec at around f/5.6-8

That was exciting. It's a brilliant shot. The colouring is so vibrant. Great work!

I tried tubes for the first time yesterday but my main problem was it was so dark to see through the viewfinder to focus.

Have I got it wrong?

Thanks Downswood!

Hmmm, have you got it wrong?
Well, what lens are you using? What length of tube?
I'll tell you a problem I've had at times:
I use a set of cheap Vivitar tubes... and depending on the order I put the 3 tubes in sometimes my auto aperture gets stuck. So try this: look through the lens and make sure the aperture ring is set wide open, then as you look through the finder turn the aperture ring down to f22. If it gets darker then they are stuck.
Let me know!

(cheap Vivitar garbage! I really should get auto tubes)

Hi Joshua,
If you weren't in Canada, I'd offer to send you my spare set but I suspect the post would be more than they would cost you over there

Nice Picture

Kim

Joshua - just a thought...

If you use your tubes with the lens in "A", but your *ist-D shows "Av --" then there's a contact problem.
I have the same issue with some cheap tubes I have. I just carefully clean the contacts on the tubes (some isopropyl alcohol can help) and they spring to life again.

(Pentax didn't make tubes with electronic contacts. Their "Auto extension tubes" are only auto on old bodies that utilise the mechanical aperture "finger".)

Matt

Impressive shot Joshua - hope you didn't get too wet

Pity about the yellow in the background, all black or a backdrop of green foliage would have isolated the flower better but then it wouldn't have been real life, would it?
It's easy to achieve total isolation in a studio setup or by digital means but your image existed in the real world and what's more, you suffered for your art - well done!

Thanks Matt
Actually my tubes are real cheap in that there are no contacts... just "finger"
Sometimes it gets stuck and I lose the open aperture in the viewfinder for metering. (sometime the finger gets bent in my bag or some dirt jams in there... just a little "jimmying" gets it right)
From Downswoods post it sounded like a similar problem.