Playing with Macro Photography

Unripe Acorn (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG Macro lens, ISO 800, 1/125 sec at f/5.6, Handheld)

I am not sure why, maybe because the weather has been a bit poor lately, but I have been getting right into marco photography.  I have been busy reading about it and over the past couple of days tried a few shots, with mixed results.  This first shot was taken just outside the house and there is a bit of softness around the edges of the acorn due to movement as it was handheld and there was a breeze as well.  I tried again today at lunchtime with a tripod, and some fill flash as it was a bit dull, but the midges got to me and it all ended up badly, with much cursing and jumping about.  As a result I popped indoors and tried again with a large allium seed-head in much more benign conditions with reasonable results.  I need to experiment with flash to try and get a little bit more depth of field while maintaining a decent shutterspeed and avoiding too high an ISO setting as that would produce excessive noise in the lovely soft background.

Allium Seedheads (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG Macro lens, ISO 800, 1/100 sec at f/4.0, fill flash with diffuser and tripod)

Allium Seedhead (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Sigma 105mm f/2.8 DG Macro lens, ISO 800, 1/200 sec at f/4.0, fill flash with diffuser and tripod)

All good fun and I hope to do quite a bit of this, messing around with different lenses, macro and standard, plus using extension tubes and possibly an achromatic filter with my standard 50mm lens.  More to come....