Pollen Beetles

....all about 4mm long, deep in a daffodil flower's trumpet.

K5, 100 mm D FA Macro + 31mm ext. tube. Pentax AF080C Ring Flash. All @ f18, ISO 80.
Handheld, manual focus.

Elements 11.



















Any thoughts most welcome!

Roger.

These are really impressive. Having been 'inside' a daffodil myself I know exactly what you have pulled off here. Well done indeed. I'm guessing that most of the ring flash illumination went round the outside of the trumpet, thereby lighting the inside indirectly?

Thanks, David.

I'm afraid I "cheated", inasmuch as I cut a half- inch vertical section of the trumpet away to reveal the base of the stamens, etc.
This was enough to let in the ring flash light & give a clearer view of the beetles.
Sorry to let you down but, again, thanks for looking & your kind comments.

Roger.

lol - guess how I did the one that I put on the main gallery this evening? But with natural light instead of flash since nothing was moving about

Wowsers! I bet the minute change and boom, they're outta focus!

Impressive sharpness for hand-held! What extension tube did you use? This is something I am looking into, I currently put a Vivitar 2x tele converter on the 100mm macro lens for similar magnification but a tube would of course reduce the amount of glass. I see that a current Pentax extension tube set is featured in the K-1 brochure and global website but only apparently available in Japan, and I would like to retain some contacts with the lens for auto exposure settings.

You can get tubes designed for 'A' series lenses (2nd hand Jessops ones come up now and then) I've got a set but although the contacts are present, their effectiveness is very hit and miss with some requiring paint to be scratched off and some even needing bits of foil inserting to ensure electrical contact is made. Mine go one further and they work perfectly - but they won't display what they are doing either on the LED or the viewfinder - you only discover the result after the event !!
Consequently, I normally use M42s and squint.

The tube was, indeed, a Jessop's, one of the set I bought new, Ages ago to use with my MX.
One on its own performs very well but, when used all together, they seem to acquire a collective slackness which makes the contacts a little unreliable.

Did the website mention a cost of the Pentax ones? (:shock

Thanks, all, for looking.

Roger.

44,000 yen whatever that is. Here is the link: http://www.ricoh-imaging.co.jp/japan/products/accessory/index35_closeup.html Amazingly, google will translate

277 quids!





Roger

Back to Jessops it is then!