Hiya GM
I don't mind not being a canon user at all but it would be nice to have a piece of glass that went 1-5x mag in such a small hand held package. That lecia sure is a pricey lens I hope you are getting a good deal on it. I have a 20mm that goes 20x with my bellows, its a real pain at getting good shots at that magnification tho.......I guess I am too spoiled from the spot on metering of my new body, manual does force us to get the proper exposure but it definitely slows me down having recalibrate exposure for each change in the shot...... Where is the 1-50x 50mm 1.4f lens I've been dreaming about LOL
Why not a 1-50x .. 18-300mm zoom ! Ha ha
You are the King of the budget macros man hehe..... Yeah those MP-E's don't come cheap, isn't that lecia photar more than 2x the price tho??......
hehe lol Yeah they are too expensive for what they offer but sure are handy and great for 1-4X. I believe its not the cost of the equipment that makes someone good at macrophotography..its all in lots of practice and patience . The photar costs around 200-400usd for a used lens. Its expensive I think but its great optics.Even though its quite old lens (its from the 70s or 80s) its one of the best macro lenses ever made ..thats why its still so pricey after 20-30 years from production date ..so I was thinking to get it and sell it after I 've enjoyed it with the MangoHaze! Heres a shot with a cheap 25mm lens on 250mm bellows:
By the way the reason I said earlier that macrophotography is all about practice and not about flashy pricey equipment , is that you can get a real cheap cine lens 16mm and a bellows and shoot trich closeups for less than 200usd and get great results . What is important to get good macro is not a good cam or an expensive macro lens but field practice shooting and by getting familiar with the equipment , that is bellows , lenses and camera you get to use them to their full potential. I believe that even with a 6-10Mp cheap cam and such a macro setup you can get excellent trichome shots. But like I said its all in practice and how much time you put to it. In reality only 1 in 50 shots is really descent at that high magnifications, when you shoot with 15-25x magnification and get a ~50micron trichome to fill the frame it really becomes impossible to work with bare hands and do micro-movements/adjustments like focusing and framing the trichome subject you want. Its so damn tiny!..even the slightest vibration can ruin a shot. So basically you ..shot and miss..and res-hoot until you get enough to make sure you have a good one to keep. To make things worst depth of field at these magnifications is a real problem, at 20x with a 12-25mm macro lens the depth of field becomes so swallow that not even a single trich is in focus at f-stop < 4 ..at f=2.8 not even the half trichome's head/sphere is in focus from back to front..
..but there is the best to solution to this.. There are specialized software apps that can combine different images that different focus points into a single image with everything in focus.Using different shots taken from the same position , and by focusing each time from closer > towards infinity) , then these images are processed by the software and are merged into a single image that has all trichomes in focus. Its basically keeping from every pic the sharp elements (areas in focus) and isolating them by masking them out ... and it does this for every pic and finaly outputs the result into a single pic. So its like shooting with f-128 but in reality you are using f-2.8 and shoot at many different focus point each time in order to get all shot elements from back to front in focus in the pics. The great thing is that you basically eliminate Depth of Field Blur 100%. Its totally sharp images like being shot with f-64 + !
I rarely post pics anymore, my coolpix hasn't seen action since OG went down LOL,.... besides wouldn't want to pollute your fine thread with non MangoHaze images
Hey man, you do need to get back to action! Get your cam and get down and dirty , covered in resin ! Your shots were always amazing, your macros are some of the best I 've seen ..but the plant and bud shots were not bad either from what I remember
It would be really nice if you could dig up some of your wonderful SSH pics to share with us
SSH Master!
The live trichome pics are really cool.....they seem more individual, like snowflakes, compared to dried trichomes...... I like how you can see the reflections of other trics in that last pic, nice1 Leet
That photo was shot with 350mm extension (bellows+extension tubes) and a 25mm old cctv camera lens.Not the sharpest but descent for a 10usd lens.Cant wait to get the photar for some serious quality and clarity.Its funny you noticed it too , yes trichomes' reflections can be seen on the big trichomes' resin spheres!
Enough rambling.. ..pics:
This Mango Haze cola is growing airy long pointy flowers and is from the slowest phenos. It not a great yielder but smells reeeaallly hazy!
We non-canon users don't have fancy macro lenses available to us like the MP-E, so we have to make due with the next best thing, a bellows......having no metering sucks but the trade off for high magnification shots is well worth it......do they make an extension for your brand of bellows?
,truly outstanding work,You've really brought the MangoHaze to light,dominated them ladies for real bro,
recently, resinbud