It seems like it was only last week we were getting violent storms, snow flurries and frost. Then suddenly there was enough sun to send me to my garden for the day. More amazingly, there was enough sun to actually burn the back of my neck while I put up a fence! (Yep, that's right. Not only do I attempt to take photographs, I also attempt DIY). Maybe I'll combine things and take a photo of my fence one day...

In amongst my DIY madness, I encountered a couple of interesting flowers at my Dads house. As usual, I'm not as happy with these photos as I'd like. Annoyingly I think it's going to be a theme with flowers and the summer.

(F/5.6, 1/320sec, 200mm, ISO-100, 27/04/08)

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with my attempts at Macro photography. I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, the lens I'm using, a Tamron 55-200 Macro that I got as part of the camera kit. Now don't get me wrong, it's a nice little lens for £70 or so. I just don't think it's as sharp or macro-esque as a dedicated lens.

Secondly, that 484rc2 ball head I bought recently. (The one I talked about here). There seems to be a little drift in it as you lock the head in place. You spend time getting the centre of your image dead centre in the view finder, you twist the lock bolt and it all slides ever so slightly out. Again, I know from various reviews and how-to's that I've read that say a ball head is not great for Macro photography.. But I'm hardly trying to photograph the head of a fly here!

Anyone any advice?

Last shot of the Causeway Coast not to feature the Causeway....

(f/5.6, 1/200sec, 200mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08)

This was another of those shots to prove out my new approach to hand held macro photography, making use of shutter priority and forcing it to work at 1/200sec.

There were two versions of this, one with White Balance set to auto and one (this one) with it set to shade. The shade setting makes the colours much more warm in this case and I felt it was the better of the two. I'm not normally  a white balance fiddler when out and about, but this time it seemed to fit (and besides Dermot was doing it).

I think in this case it falls down over the depth of focus. At the 200mm end, F/5.6 seems way too shallow and the blown up picture actually hurts my eyes a little. I've tried re-cropping it to see if it works better, but to no avail. I guess next time I need to consider dinking with the ISO as well if the F-stop is so wide.

During the trip up north I noticed Dermot was making a lot of use of his macro lens. I mean, I took him to see some of the best coast line in the island and he stands on a beach with a macro lens taking photos of rocks!

He did get me thinking though. Maybe there is something to looking at the little things, even when the big thing is so pretty.

Now, I've tried ad-hoc Macro stuff out and about before. Never with much success. The only macro lens I own is also my telephoto lens and at 200mm it's probably not the best option out there for this sort of thing. Certainly, every freehand shot I'd ever tried didn't work up until now.

While shooting in Carnlough, I noticed one of the old trailers had a lot of rust and some odd paint splashes so I decided to give a real close up on this stuff one more go. but this time I tried something a little different.

Instead of sticking to my trusty aperture priority, I switched to shutter priority and set it to 1/200. A lot of the books and websites I'd read talk about reciprocal values for focal length and shutter speed and use mumbo jumbo, but in English I figure it means...

To avoid shake, your shutter speed needs to be at least 1 over the focal length of the lens.

50mm needs at least 1/50

200mm needs at least 1/200

etc.

Yeah, I guess you all knew that. (And you probably all know what reciprocal means as well). I'm slightly embarrassed it took so long for me to realise an answer to my shaky hand syndrome was to change modes on the camera.

Anyway, on with the rust.

(1/200sec, F/5, 181mm, ISO-100, 12/04/08)

Sorry it’s been so quiet lately. A few different things had cropped up and… well, you know how it is.

I’m always keen to try different types of photography and over the last few months have been lucky enough to try a lot of different things (portraits, street shots, landscapes, night photography, HDR, the list goes on). A lot of the opportunities have come about by talking with people about their hobbies, telling them about mine and generally trying to be a good bloke. It’s always worth asking friends with interesting hobbies if you can tag along, you might get a great photo or even a great new hobby too.

A few weeks back, I was lucky enough to be invited by a work friend to a local rifle club to take some pictures. It was an excellent experience and I’ll share some of those pictures here over the next few days. In the meantime, he has my thanks!

This is a cropped close up of the barrel of a rifle – I don’t have the details of the weapon to hand – they’re not really important in this context.

It’s a good example of the ‘beauty in the eye’ type thing. I like the shot for the shallow depth of field, the reflections and the little marks showing the gun has had some use. The friend who owns the gun immediately commented on the hexagonal pattern around the barrel. Where I saw a nice image, he saw abrasions proving the rifling is pretty accurate apart from maybe a small throw to one side.

(Oh, for those of you scanning my images for signs of sensor dirt – keep it up! But you’re wasting your time here (I hope!), this image would have had the dirty marks cropped out).