What the Heck is that? Super close-up.
Lately I have been having a lot of fun with my Canon ef 100 2.8 macro lens, I also used a 25 extension tube and a 1.4 extender to get really close to my subject. With a 50mp camera like the 5ds I will be able to crop in really tight for even closer images. At this point I am so close, that it is tough to guess exactly what you are looking at. so here goes, any guesses? It kind of looks like a terry cloth towel or a cool looking textile almost like a sequined dress. Up close it has a texture a bit like scale armor that uses overlapping scales for protection.
Beach towel? Prom Dress? Terri cloth underpants in the aftermath of a tornado in British Colombia?
This is a tough one, it is not a towel. If i pull back out a bit it starts to make a little more sense. Still confusing though, almost like a horse, the colors seem very familiar. There is hair, so it is obviously organic, an animal of some kind.
Mr Ed quietly reading the newspaper as the sounds of children playing dances on the morning air like honeysuckles? A Kite? Bermuda shorts?
Now I am practically giving it away. Patterns of color to provide camouflage from birds and other predators.
Zebra upholstery? A limited edition ukulele bag signed by the members of Grand Funk Railroad?
If you can't tell yet it is a monarch butterfly wing.
Getting so up-close and personal can be really difficult. Once the camera is so zoomed in movement is exaggerated, little movements travel up the tripod leg and look like an earthquake. All of this wiggling can lead to blurry photos. A couple of tricks I have learned to keep things sharp are to use a tiny tripod on a solid surface like a cement basement floor. That way the subject and camera are locked together. Using a flash to light can minimize movement too, since the exposure is so short. It can be difficult to get enough light even with a flash because the extension tubes have the effect of lowering the light levels since less light gets to the camera sensor.
These photos have very little depth but that is another item to consider in macro photography. Usually for this kind of image it is smart to shoot multiple images with minute focus changes between each shot, then later the photos can be combined digitally to produce a single image that is sharp all over.
This kind of photography can seem light years away form the architectural photography that I do but in many ways both disciplines are quite similar. They both require pushing the technology to the absolute limit to get the highest image fidelity. They often require uncommon equipment and know how and attention to detail. I also think both are a lot of fun.
Have you got anything you would like to see magnified many times? Let me know what you would like to see and I will take a shot at making a macro of it.