RTH Macro Photos

A few LSA, bahia and bloodstone close-ups.

Cool!

Not my photo but it’s cool
dino bone 

A Study of Malachite

I have always loved Malachite. Was first introduced it as a child. My Mom and I went to a local rock show with a seasonal neighbor and his Daughter’s family who were visiting.

I had $10.00 to spend. Spent half of it on a piece of malachite that was in the children’s silent auction. I was 10 years old at the time. Bid incriments of 5 cents.

I kept that piece with me over the years.
Last year was able to purchase this piece locally. I love it.
Appreciate that many of the individual “tubes” were not smoothed down totally.

Photos were taken with my Canon DSLR. Some with just the macro setting and a macro filter. Some with a macro lens and on macro setting.

Quick test of some settings I'm trying

Test 2 by Grant B, on Flickr

One more.

Cool one

It's called a bridge camera Grant. It is said to bridge the gap between DSLR with changeable lenses and a point and shoot with fixed.
Basically a giant point and shoot with fixed super broad range zoom lens. Everything about it is extreme.
the focal range of 24mm to 520mm
the lenses are large
the sensor is large
it is heavy
the zoom extends a long distance
it has many capabilities including stacking, bracketing, highspeeds, sophisticated video, etc and in general seriously complex. My wife bought it for her to use. She does not like it because of it's complexity. I bought a 280 page book on it, a big help learning each function. Lol, by the time you set the camera down and pick it up the next day you about have to refresh your mind on how to use it for any given function.

The Lumix I owned a decade ago was technically advanced for it's time. Get a few particles of sand in the long zoom and it is toast.
It must have some weak spots with a zoom range of 24mm to 520mm. It seems to have a lot of recent technology that must compensate for such a long range of mechanical focal lengths ? Not sure. Considering the long list of new technology, it is hard to say how they effect the performance. Consider performance of tiny technology packed cell phone cameras...

The photo above was taken at almost max zoom in full sunlight with a lot of colored background reflection. A zoom macro is a new one on me. The depth of field seemed deeper going with the zoom setting instead of the macro setting. And flattens the image. The real test is how it performs using the macro setting with the camera 5 inches from subject instead of the max zoom setting at 48 inches from camera. Zoom had to be used, the nervous dragonfly would barely let me get within 4 feet of it. Camera shake was not an issue since the camera was so far away from the subject, easily hand held. And as any zoom/telephoto camera would be it is light hungary at full zoom; this shot done in strong sunlight so no problem.

I can offer no conclusion because it has so much diversity and I have not tested it's other capabilities.
The full zoom worked well enough. Anxious to try the stacking option !
The focus bracketing, exposure bracketing and aperture bracketing all work great.

#1 complaint was getting the autofocus to focus where I wanted it to focus but that can be a problem with any macro shot. The autofocus is extremely quick to lock focus but it does not always focus where you want it to focus. So I used manual.
The manual focus has an optional magnifying window that helps see the focal plane better and within this focal plane magnifier the focal plane is lit up with a blue iridescent hue which is an amazing new option. I used the blue hue to find the focus plane. Maybe I can find a Youtube to demonstrate this blue hue focal plane technology. Especially helpful for those with eye issues.

All Sony cameras have it, I use it frequently.  It's very helpful.  I like the "medium" setting.