Just beat me to it.

1.2 magnification across the full field of view. Made by Pentax for Pentax, fits all Pentax DSLRs. It was permanently on my K20D, now it's permanently on the K3. Wouldn't be without it.

If it doesn't sort you out, nothing will.

Steve

A small (1cm) flower on a larger, hairy (plus small spines) cactus. Two pictures, one going for hard, intricate detail, the other looking for the softer, gentler side of a cactus. The first is a stack of 17 shots with the DA35mm macro @ f8. The second is a single shot with the FA77mm + 35mm tube @ f5.6. Both with the K3.

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as usual.

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Steve

An e-mail can't do any harm, but be prepared for the answer you don't want. From the pictures of the adapters, it looks like the diameter of the bit that the flash grips is about 77mm. That's too big for the Pentax flash, which needs about 60mm.

Steve

What a good idea.

There are a number of indoor plants on our window ledges where we know the species but not the variety so we call them by the name of the person who gave them to us (or the person who gave them to the person who...). Some others are known by the place we got them - including 'Pub Plant' because we grew it from a surrepticiously acquired bit of a plant in a pub while having a meal. I've wondered about turning the camera on them, but never got round to it.

Then there was the year I tried to take an 'interesting' photograph (i.e. not accurate but bland record shot) of every type of flower in the garden. The result was a lot of files on the hard drive that still need to be sorted and processed.

And then there are the sempervivums (houseleeks). It started with an annual record shot to keep track of what variety was where otherwise you're hopelessly lost if labels disappear or become unreadable. Then it became a couple of shots each year for the same purpose, as a single shot was not good enough for varieties that change a lot through the year. Now I'm wondering about trying to capture their annual cycle of changes in a way that shows them at their best rather than taking just purely functional shots.

You may have prodded me into getting on with all the above... when the garden itself is not demanding immediate and lengthy attention!

Steve

I'd be happy to have either of them individually on my wall.

But as a pair, they don't quite work for me. It's taken several looks over a couple of days to realise why. It's because the point of focus seems to have changed. My eye goes to the dandelion flower in the first, the blue flower (forget-me-not?) in the second. That feels slightly uncomfortable and detracts from the 'same but a week apart' message. Having the point of focus in the second near the centre of the decaying dandelion flower would be a better match to my eyes. But perhaps I'm just being overly fussy...

Steve

Wonderful! And nostalgic. It's the sort of thing that first got me interested in chemistry (many, many years ago...).

Thermal and density gradients, convection and solubility varying with temperature probably had a role in it. One of my children once grew a 'huge' (2+ inch long) crystal of copper sulphate by suspending a tiny crystal in a jar of solution and leaving it on a window ledge. After a while, the crystal started to shrink and small crystals grow on the bottom of the jar, just like yours. It could all be explained by convection currents, differential solubility, density gradients etc. More importantly, the main crystal was quickly removed and varnished while it was still big enough to be impressive. I think she still has it.

Steve

Sunny 16 rule says 1.25 sec at f16 on a sunny day. Should be OK for architectural shots unless the building is very wobbly. Or you could go for Victorian-style portraits where the sitter is gritting their teeth while trying not no twitch a muscle until the photographer says they can move.

Will your next challenge involve a pile of magnesium powder on a tray?

Steve

Rio hasn't lost his good looks since he last appeared here!

Steve

Aha! That's the picture I wanted but couldn't get. I didn't have the courage (read that as competence) to clone a cactus. Thank you!!

Re the stamens, I wonder whether different size reduction algorithms are good/bad at different types of detail. Those stamens are quite different to, say, closely spaced lines so it wouldn't be unreasonable for one algorithm to be best for one and another for the other. But that's pure speculation.

Steve

Fair cop, guv, guilty on both counts!

I'd tried a square crop but still had a couple of orange tips protruding at the left, which annoyed me, so wondered whether leaving more of the offending flower in the frame would be less distracting. Clearly not. The plant couldn't be moved for the shot, bits drop off it very easily!

The stamens are odd. They are sharp in the full size original but not after being shrunk to 800px prior to posting. Here's the same but uploading the full size version and letting the forum software reduce the size. It looks better through my varifocals. What do you think?




Steve