CalArti

I arrived a little late to the party for wildflowers this spring. Three weeks ago I scouted some areas and saw little happening - a few wild leeks and harbinger of spring, but otherwise no flowers were out. Given the cold weather since then I expected that the early spring flowers would just be peaking by now - but to my surprise I arrived in the woods today and found the hepatica and trout lilies gone, and bloodroot and other earlier flowers long gone. I guess 3 weeks is a considerable period of time in early spring.

But not everything was finished - here are a few images from this afternoon’s trip. Click on the images for larger files.

Showy trillium were the first flowers to grab my attention, and the woods were thick with them today. Some trillium were even starting to fade. Here’s a standard issue trillium, and close up of another specimen below it:

Next I stumbled into some dutchman’s britches - a flower that I usually think of as an earlier spring wildflower. As you can see, this specimen was a little old and worn around the edges - but hey, many of us are…

Spring beauty was everywhere..

And with fronds like these, who needs anenomes?

And a little bellwort to round out the day:

This will probably be it for my 2013 spring wildflowers - not sure if I will be back in the woods before the party is completely over. All of these shots were taken with a Pentax K-01, which is proving to be quite a useful camera for closeup work. Lens was an SMC A* 200mm macro. A diffuser was used in some shots, but the soft light form high overcast clouds and the flowering canopy above reduced the need for the diffuser. For the first time I used an IR remote to trigger the camera, and have to say that is one piece of gear I should have gotten a long time ago….

Looking out of my window this evening I thought I saw an unusual sparrow and went outside to check it out. I steeled down in the passenger seat of my car, parked in the driveway, hoping to get a closeup view of the bird - but it apparently departed when it saw me coming out. In a few minutes the house sparrows, grackles and jays came back and started feeding, and then this mourning dove. Here it is, shaking its head after a drink form the bird bath. Click on the image for a larger file.

Pentax K-5, Tokina ATX 400 f5.6.

We’re still waiting for spring here… At least the houseplants are flowering! Here is a close up of the patterns and textures found within a peace lily bloom:

Pentax K-01, SMC D-FA 100mm macro, and 65mm of extension tubes. Click for a larger image.

Spring has been slow to come to west Michigan this year. Yesterday temps hovered around freezing and the sky spat out a mix of snow and rain. Today started the same but in late afternoon the clouds broke and under a warm mid April sun the temperatures rose quickly, even into the mid 50’s. I toured my little backyard looking for some photographic subjects and found a few tiny midges sitting on the fence.

The midges were small - maybe 3 to 4 mm from toe to toe. It was breezy, but I thought I’d give the Pentax Q another test. Initially I shot with a 50mm macro lens, but the magnification was not enough for these tiny insects. So I changed up to a 100mm macro, added an extension tube to get beyond 1:1 magnification, and took a crack at it using the Bolt LED ring light. Here is the best shot out of about 100 tries - after about an hour the temps got even warmer and the midges flew off into the late afternoon. The bushy antenna suggest that this is a male midge.

Click on the image for a larger file.

Gear used to make this photo was a Pentax Q, D-FA 100mm macro, 25mm extension tube, LED ringlight and a tripod. taken at f4 and ISO 125. The image is not cropped.

As I mentioned in the prior post, I try get a few shots of honey bees in crocuses each March. I think of it as a little spring training to get ready for more serious insect shooting in the warm months to come. The crocuses are later this year but I managed to spend a little time chasing bees this weekend. This time I used the tried and true Pentax K-5 and A* 200mm macro setup, along with a conventional flash.

I have to try to teach the bees some new tricks, because they all did the same thing - dive into the crocus head first, rummage around, spin ’round counter-clockwise and then buzz off to another flower. That made it easier for me to practice. Here are the better shots from Sunday afternoon (click on the images for larger views):

The thing that gets me excited about the Q is not that it is a great do-it-all pocketable compact (because it isn’t) but rather that it is a great interchangeable lens KIT and I can carry a small bag and have tremendous capacity.

With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a macro setup that would compete with my DSLR / A* 200mm macro rig but be small enough to fit into a little camera bag. My choice for the macro lens was a Pentax SMC M50 f4 macro - a lens that I know to be remarkably sharp - on a generic Q to K mount adapter, and a Bolt VM-110 LED ring light (continuous light source.) I had to go with a continuous light source because the electronic shutter on the Q combined with a generic K to Q adapter will only flash synch at 1/13th of a second.

While the Pentax SMC M 50mm f4 macro lens is somewhat slow, I have used it in snow crystal photos in the past and know it to be remarkably sharp even wide open. It is also pretty small and light for a 50mm macro. Mounted on the Pentax Q it is the equivalent of a 275mm lens on a 35mm (a.k.a. full frame) system. The maximum magnification is only 1/2 life sized, but since the Q’s sensor is only about 1/4th of an inch across that still allows for some full frame photos of pretty small subjects…

The Bolt Ring light arrived earlier this week and I assembled the Q macro setup. Overall, it is a really sweet little outfit. Here is a photo of the Q, M50 & adapter, and Bolt ring light. While it is not tiny it certainly is quite compact:

OK - On to test the setup. I fired up the Bolt light and did a few tests on a $20 bill. Here is a test at maximum magnification:

An actual pixel crop:

That image was taken with the front of the lens / ring light about 5 inches from the bill. The Bolt ring light kicked out enough light to allow hand holding of the camera at ISO 400.

So far so good. In reality, though, I don’t expect to take hand held macros of 1/2 inch items on a casual basis, so here is a more likely scenario - a shot taken with the front of the camera about 1 foot from the bill. Again, it looks good to me:

Again with an actual pixel crop:

Now to try it in the real world…

We have had a late spring and the crocuses are just starting to bloom. The crocuses draw honey bees and my routine spring training involves going after the bees with my insect macro setup which hopefully gets me into shape for summer insect shooting. This spring I decided to try the Q setup…

Unfortunately, things did not go entirely as planned. I took a bunch of test shots, none of which were any good. But I immediately noticed weird artifacts popping up in the shots:

Arg… So this is the dreaded “rolling shutter distortion” I’ve heard about…

Here’s what’s going on: the Q does not have a physical shutter (i.e. - metal louvers that open and close to expose the sensor.) Most dedicated Q lenses have a leaf shutter built into the lens, but when using the Q to K adapter there is no shutter. In this case, the camera uses an “electronic shutter” where it turns the sensor on, reads the light levels, then turns it off. But it can’t do it all at once, so it turns on parts of the shutter sequentially. While it is still very fast, things like bee’s wings are faster and so they create distortion. You can read about this on Wikipedia.

So where does that leave me… I was quite excited about using the M50 macro on the Q. The native Q lenses are very impressive and versatile - the 01 is a fast normal prime, the 02 is a solid normal zoom (equivalent to a 28-85mm full frame zoom), the 03 fisheye is a very sharp ultra wide angle (17mm equivalent) and the 06 telephoto is a remarkably good telephoto zoom equivalent to 85 - 250mm).

The 50mm macro is a good idea and equivalent to a 275mm f4 macro, but falls short in the narrow category of flying insects. It still works great for taking pictures of $20 bills, flowers, and other stationary or slow moving items. Here are a few bees, and one fly, taken with the 50mm that illustrate that:

So for the next step I think I will try a Raynox 250 close-up adapter on the 06 telephoto zoom. It is not too expensive and would be generally useful on setups other than the Q. Alternately I might get the official Pentax Q to K adapter which has a built in shutter and would overcome the rolling shutter distortion - but would also require manually setting the shutter and shooting in TAv (ISO priority) mode.

Going back to my opening point about the Pentax Q (or Q10) - the beauty of this system is not that it is simply small but rather that it is versatile and small. My biggest frustration with DSLR’s (and before them film SLR’s) is that short of carrying a very hefty bag I could not tote a serious macro setup or broad range of lenses. To be able to cover everything from (in 35mm equivalents) 17mm to 275mm in one small bag, and to have the equivalent of a 275mm macro lens in that small bag is itself quite exciting. And while many online reviewers can’t get over the Q’s small sensor size. At lower ISO’s the output from the Q meets the most demanding standards, and at higher ISO’s it is fine for non technical applications. The small sensor size does mean that you are limited if you want shallow DOF, but if you are a macro shooter like me you will still be hungry for DOF in high magnification shots. In fact, given the image quality, the enhanced DOF from the small sensor, and compatibility with existing lenses, I’d expect the Q / Q10 (and beyond) to become a cult classic of serious macro photographers who also appreciate portability in their gear.

The weather is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you’ll get. Here it is, the first day of spring, and it is 18F, cold and snowing lake effect snow. I spent an hour or so outside hoping for some snow crystal images, but the snow is effervescent and not photogenic. Here is one photo from tonight - maybe the last for this season:

Click on the image for a larger file. I am not sure where the green tones come from - never got those before with this setup - but maybe it is just the power of the first day of spring.

Looking through some old photos… This one is from a trip to northern lower Michigan in 2008. It was late April, I don’t know what the body of water is but the old dock was long submerged and the sun shining on a clear day made it all the more visible… A little help form a polarizer, too..

This claim check fell out of one my suitcases - a very old suitcase - so I snapped a photo of it. Pentax Mz-S, Lensbaby Muse, Tri-X,D76 1+1:

Click for a larger image.

Continuing to work with the Pentax K-01:

Here are some more snow crystals from last weekend, February 2-3, 2013. I’ve shifted to the Pentax K-01 exclusively for this work. The image quality is outstanding (same APS sensor as in the Pentax K5) and the focusing aids make it a breeze to get quickly get the crystals in sharp focus. I’ve also come to see just how much diffraction affects these shots - so no more stopping down past f8!

No cold weather snow is in the forecast so it might be a while before we have more snowflake photos:

A few more from recent days - more to come. Click an image for a larger file.

Some with hints of red in the background:

And some with blue in the background: