25 January 2012, Daffodil (Narcissus)

I am a typical color photographer. I think I can safely say that I have never before even experimented whith black & white photography. This photograph is actually the result of a mistake (clicking on the wrong category in my raw conversion software). It struck me how this image resembles a pencil or charcoal drawing.

18 January 2012, Frosted Daisy

After an unusually warm autumn and start of the winter the daisies were still standing in our garden. I made this yesterday morning after a cold night. Shooting the 45-200 + diopter at 150mm and f16 on the GH2 effectively makes this a 300mm/f32 (!) macro shot (full frame equivalent). Considering that it is pretty sharp. Everybody is talking about the 4/3 cameras being diffraction limited at apertures of f8 and more. I wouldn't worry about it all that much. Depth of field is more important here. As you can see "bokeh" (the rendering of the out of focus background) is not a problem either in low contrast circumstances like these.

11 July 2011, shooting macro with the GH2

The image of the silver studded blue was made using a mediocre lens with a diopter (close-up filter) on the Panasonic GH2. Dedicated macro-lenses are either too short and expensive for my taste (Leica 45mm for m4/3 and Olympus 50mm for 4/3) or non-existent. So you have to improvise. I own a Sigma 3.5/180mm APO Macro for Nikon and a m4/3 adapter. So I could have used that lens. But I wanted to try a few other things for which I needed AF and image stabilisation. What I tried, shooting handheld using AF-C mode combined with AF-tracking and IS, did work to a certain extent. I got reasonably sharp images and AF-tracking kept the focus where I wanted it. But shooting like that, handheld, required fast shutterspeeds and consequently shallow depth of field. Additionally f5.6 is by far not the sharpest aperture using the combination of the Lumix G 4-5.6/50-200mm + Nikon 4T diopter at 200mm. You really need to stop down to f11 for optimal sharpness.

The image shown was made the old fashioned way: tripod and manual focus. It is possible to make very sharp images that way, even though the combination of this lens and the Nikon diopter sounds a bit "iffy". Several others have pointed out though that sharpness depends primarily on the skills of the photographer. The amount of detail that you see in this 100% crop is easily enough for a 13 x 19 inch print (if not a little bit larger).

4 July 2011, Marsh frog

Walking in the Duurswouder Heath, I came across this frog. And, as always when you see a photo opportunity, I had nothing but my Canon S90 with me. Not exactly the piece of equipment that you want for macro photography. Normally I wouldn't even have tried but this individual didn't seem very wary. I started shooting, came closer and closer and ... it jumped into the water. Just half a meter away it kept staring at me. So I started to approach it again, the Canon compact close above the water (wrist strap, fingers supporting the bottom and my thumb on the shutter-release button). In the end I got away with a shot of the frog at less than two inches from the front lens. What is so amazing about it, is the incredible depth of field and sharpness at 100%. Other than that it is not a great photo, of course.

20 June 2011, Moddergat

The area outside the 40 feet high dyke protecting the twin villages of Paesens-Moddergat is one of my favorite places in this part of the world. Probably because it is a vast open space in an overpopulated country. Last night it was very quiet after a storm the previous day. The landscape of the Wadden Sea (Unesco World Heritage) changes on a day by day basis. It's never the same. So much beauty, free for all to visit and still there's hardly ever anyone there. A larger version is available here.

08 June 2011, Standing out

I regularly walk past this piece of architecture, appropiately called "Casa Confetti". Today I noticed the way it was standing out in an otherwise grey world.