# Early Spring... photos



## MikeScone (Mar 18, 2012)

It's only March 17th, and the temperature today was 70F. For Central New York, that's pretty unseasonable. The crocuses are out really early this year. So, it's time to take pictures!

Groups of flowers provide wide areas of contrasting color:






However, a "macro" lens is designed to let you get closer:





And closer:




At this range, there is so little depth of field that the very slightest breeze or the vibration from your pulse moves the image enough to blur the picture. A high shutter speed helps eliminate blur.
_(Nikkor 105mm f/3.5 at 1/4000sec)_

And even closer:




_(Nikkor 105mm f/8 at 1/500 sec)_

By setting the lens at a smaller aperture (larger f-stop number), you can get a little more depth of field, so that the purple stripes on the white petals still show, but are blurred enough so they aren't too "busy":




_(Nikkor 105mm - f/22 at 1/125 sec)_

Finally, I tried my LensBaby - a rather strange lens I don't use very much, but it's kind of neat for this application. The LensBaby is permanently focused at around 18 inches, and has only a small "sweet spot" which is in focus. The lens is mounted on three fingers, and you can wiggle the lens on the fingers to move the "sweet spot" around the picture. The result is a picture with a small area in sharp focus, and the rest with a marked "motion blur" effect. 





If it's Spring where you are - grab your camera and go out and take pictures! 

You're welcome to post the best ones to this thread, and tell us how you took them.


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## Nancy McClelland (Mar 18, 2012)

All of our Flora is about a month ahead. Had a pretty good rain, so we'll be hitting Death Valley next week--lots of flowering after a downpour if you catch it just right--all happens and is over in 3 days usually.


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## MILU (Mar 18, 2012)

Now THIS is a good camera, and obviously also a good photographer!!! I talk about the camera because nowadays, with average cameras, the pics don't get very clear, the image is somehow low definition even if the camera is a "good" one and the photographer is skilled. You took very beautiful pics, thanks for sharing!!! 
Could we have more, maybe with a bunny biting the flowers? LOL :laugh:
It would be SO funny to see good pics like these with naughty bunnies... haha


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## ZRabbits (Mar 18, 2012)

Beautiful pics. 

Thanks for sharing. 

K


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## LakeCondo (Mar 19, 2012)

Great pictures.

Chicago has had 6-7 80`+ days so far this March. Previously the record # was 2.


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## MikeScone (Mar 19, 2012)

*hotmaildeal wrote: *


> Now THIS is a good camera, and obviously also a good photographer!!! I talk about the camera because nowadays, with average cameras, the pics don't get very clear, the image is somehow low definition even if the camera is a "good" one and the photographer is skilled. You took very beautiful pics, thanks for sharing!!!
> Could we have more, maybe with a bunny biting the flowers? LOL :laugh:
> It would be SO funny to see good pics like these with naughty bunnies... haha


The camera's a Nikon D7000 DSLR, for what that is worth, although I suspect any DSLR would do as well. The macro lens - a Micro-Nikkor 105mm - is specially designed to do close-up photography, and it is incredibly sharp. 

Typically, the "macro mode" on zoom lenses will work at the lens' widest focal length, and allows you to get within about a foot and a half of the subject, with the image on the sensor (or film) being about a quarter of life size at most. In macro terms, this is called "1:4" - that is, the image is 1/4 of the original. A macro lens like the one I used for these pictures allows 1:1 images - the image of the crocus stamen was the same size on the camera sensor as it was in real life. The front element of the lens was about 3" from the flower. 

Nikon also makes a 55mm Micro-Nikkor which can also do 1:1 reproduction, and many people prefer the smaller and lighter lens. I like the longer focal length, because it means that I get the same magnification from twice as far away. I've used the 55mm, and found that all too often I was shading the subject with the lens, and if I'm taking pictures of insects I'm less likely to scare them away if I can stay further out. 

One reason that pictures from point-and-shoot digital cameras - even the "good" ones - can never be as sharp as pictures from DSLR cameras is simple physics. There's something called the "diffraction limit" which sets a lower limit on lens resolution. In simplified terms, it says that a lens can only focus an image down to a certain size. If you try to make the image smaller than that, the light waves interact to make it impossible. 

Because of the marketing drive for ever-higher numbers of megapixels in ever-smaller-cameras, today's point-and-shoot cameras are being made with sensors which have pixels much smaller than the diffraction limit, so that the smallest point that the lens can focus smears over lots of pixels on the sensor. Such an image is, by definition, fuzzy. When you add in other problems caused by the tiny size of the sensor - interaction between pixels, and so on - it only gets worse. 

DSLR's have much larger sensors - even the least expensive DSLR sensor is many times larger than a point-and-shoot's, and professional "full frame" DSLR's have sensors fully half-again larger than the consumer and prosumer models like mine. So, even if the point-and-shoot is set at a higher resolution, the picture from a DSLR will always be sharper. 

I don't have any pictures of bunnies eating these flowers, but a bunny eating a flower? No problem. Apple blossoms are a favorite. Natasha's just waiting for the apple tree on the lawn to blossom this spring...


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## Nancy McClelland (Mar 19, 2012)

One of the many things we miss since we moved--we had 14 different fruit trees with 4 varieties of apples.


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