Macro faceoff

When I saw the macro distance of 0.49 feet inscribed on the side of my new 22mm EF-M lens, I decided I had to do a comparison with my real macro lens, a 100mm f/2.8. I have a sunflower I've been protecting from the deer all summer, and it finally flowered. Since it is in a pot, I transported it to the side of my shed where I took pictures both in shade and in sun, with flash and without, with both setups. These seem to be the two best images.

The first image is from the macro lens on the Canon 5D Mark III #8. Exposure was f/5.6, 1/400th, ISO 400, no flash. The second image is with the 22mm on the M100. Exposure was f/11, 1/60th, ISO 125, flash. Image quality of both is quite acceptable. I would need to equalize all the exposure parameters to determine whether the better background blur on the macro lens is an inherent advantage. I just checked the M100 and it was set to aperture priority, so that was my fault.

But absent another round of testing, I am assured that the 22mm lens can produce usable macro images of flowers. That's what I was trying to determine.

Update: The two sunflowers in that pot looked great on Sept. 2 and I thought about taking another portrait the following day. But there were a couple of windstorms on the 3rd and they got a little bit beaten up. And then, on the 4th, they were gone. A deer dipped its head into the cage and ate them. Never count on a photo opportunity being there later, take it now.

Star Trails

Back in film days, I tried doing star trails. I didn't have a good view of the sky from my yard in Massachusetts, so one night in 2004 I set up my my medium format camera in a wildlife refuge some distance away. It is hard to experiment with film because it is one long exposure, and it takes at least a day to develop the film. For medium format slide film, I used to mail that in to Adorama and turnaround took at least a week. If a plane flies across the sky during your exposure, that's in your image. With digital, the usual technique is to take many shorter exposures and combine them. Plane lights can be edited out of individual images.

With the arrival of the 14mm lens a few days ago and with a clear view to the north from my Montana yard, I decided to give star trails a try last night. Using the built-in intervalometer in the Canon 6D Mark II #12, I took 271 30-second images between 9:39pm and 12:08am. (It's actually 32 seconds, from what I have read.) As the first image was being captured, I set off my flash unit several times, which is why the trees and part of the lawn are lit up.

In Photoshop, I stacked the images, set all of the layers to "Lighten," flattened the image, ran it through the RAW filter to bring out more color and detail, and cropped it. My neighbor's house lights were on for only two images right around midnight, so I edited those two files to take the lights out. The process is ridiculously easy. But it takes a few minutes for the computer to do the stacking and lightening. I tried to save the file before I flattened it, and after an hour Photoshop told me the file exceeded 2Gb and could not be saved as a PSD. I was supposed to save it as PSB, which is large document format. So, bottom line is it is an easy but time consuming process. Not bad for a first attempt, IMO, but now I have to find a more interesting foreground.

If one doesn't have the full version of Photoshop, there is a free program called StarStaX which will accomplish essentially the same thing. One downside is StarStaX does not read RAW files, so they have to be converted (JPG or TIF) before starting the process. I didn't explore all of the features, but it works and it is interesting to watch the process as it builds the image. I tried "Save after each step" to assemble the images into a video showing the trails growing. I tried both Premiere Elements and Photoshop to make the video but there were some gaps in the trails that showed up during playback. The individual frames look OK, so maybe it needs to be encoded differently. Or maybe I can be happy with the single still image that I got. From exploring this over the past few days, you can make this as simple or as complex as you want to.

As mentioned, the 6D has a built-in intervalometer, but there are some limitations. The number of exposures can be set as high as 99, or unlimited. I set it on unlimited and had to go out there at 12:08 to stop it. And the maximum exposure that can be set on the 6D is 30 (or 32) seconds. What I would like to do is use the 5D Mark III (which does not have an intervalometer), set the exposure to one minute and let it run for six hours, which would be 360 exposures. I found a fairly cheap ($20) device on Amazon that will allow me to do this.

And one more thing: If you have the lawn sprinklers set to run overnight, remember to turn them off. The back of the camera (fortunately not the lens) got a few drops on it before I stopped them.

Update: I was checking my camera settings and realized I actually shot the images in Aperture Priority mode rather than Manual. As a result, the exposure time was 25 seconds, not 32. With the intervalometer set at 33 seconds, there is an eight-second gap between images. If I zoom way in, there is a noticeable gap between the star images. I'm going to try again tonight with the Manual setting and get that gap down to one second, which hopefully is not detectable.

Last Night

2004 on film

Wide

I've had the Canon 17-35mm f/2.8 wide angle zoom for longer than I've had a DSLR, 24 years. The lens did not have a great reputation and Canon has come out with replacements several times. (Its current descendent is a 16-35mm f/2.8 that sells for $1,999.) But for all that time it was the widest lens I had, so I would get it out when I needed to shoot wide. Recent real estate interiors convinced me I could use something even wider, but rather than invest in Canon's expensive zoom that would only get me to 16mm, I got a 14mm f/2.8 Samyang for a fraction of the price. The old lens is going on eBay.

In comparing the Canon to the Samyang, I have three immediate conclusions: 14mm is noticeably wider than 17mm, the Samyang is a decent lens, but the "L" glass in the Canon produces more vibrant colors. On that last point, that's what Photoshop is for.

One quirk of the Samyang and one way they hold down cost is it is manual focus. However, there is enough circuitry built into it so the DSLR will confirm when it is in focus. With a wide angle lens and an f/stop of about 8, focus is not nearly as critical as with, say, a 500mm lens wide open at f/4. The first project I have in mind for the 14mm is star trails from my back yard. If the sky is relatively clear, I might try that tonight. Anyway, here is a comparison of the old and the new lenses, Photoshopped to make up for some of that color discrepancy.

Old 17-35mm

New 14mm

And as if one new lens wasn't enough, I also got a new lens for my M100 mirrorless. The M-series has been discontinued by Canon, but I still use my 7-year-old M100 when I want something smaller but still more capable than my phone or the old 10mp Canon S95. I've had my eye on the 22mm (35mm equivalent) f/2 for quite a while, and finally pulled the trigger. For the most part, camera manufacturers seem to have abandoned the small camera field to the the phone manufacturers, so I decided to take this route for now. Maybe in a year or two I will get a phone with a much better camera than I have now. The below image was taken with a different sun angle than the previous two, but the difference in focal length is apparent, 14mm vs. 17mm vs. 35mm. The 35mm length is considered ideal for street photography, and getting this $199 lens for my M100 instead of a $6,000 Leica that is about the same size seemed like a good idea. We'll see how much I use it. The specs state it has a 0.49-foot macro distance, so that might be useful. I think the 0.49-foot (six-inch) spec is from the subject to the sensor. I measured only about four inches from the front of the lens to the subject. One word: flowers.

One thing I noticed immediately is there is no autofocus switch, so it is impossible to focus manually. Physically, it is slightly bigger than I thought it would be, but much more pocketable than the 15-45 kit lens. The camera/lens combo is bigger than the S95 which has a 28-105mm equivalent zoom, but the advantage of the M100 is it has more pixels, 24mp vs. 10Mp. Within the limitations of the fixed 35mm equivalent, it should produce much better images than the S95.

Here I'm testing out the macro. This is a sunflower that is about to bloom inside a cage that keeps the deer out. I would say it is good, not great. I'll have to try my real macro lens on this. But, judging from the work of most so-called street photographers, being able to parse every hair on a sunflower isn't a priority.

No blind

After the mostly-unproductive session in the hunting blind a few days ago, I set out the close-focus trailcam the last few days to see how often the bluebirds came by. They came to the birdbath early in the morning, then the ravens took over for most of the rest of the day. Given this information, reluctantly I got up this morning at 6:30 to set out the Canon 5D Mark III #8 with 24-105mm lens set on 105mm, prefocused, motion trigger. Then I went back to bed.

These images are heavily cropped because it was unknown where in the frame the bird was going to be when the motion trigger went off. The advantage of sitting in a blind is you can use a tighter field of view and fill most of the frame with the subject. You move the lens to frame the subject, and ideally you set the focus point right on the eye. The risk is sitting there for hours and having no bluebirds coming by. And that's why I use prefocusing and motion trigger, and have to use a wider field of view:

Coon

This isn't the first time I've seen a raccoon show up on the trail camera, but it doesn't happen very often. We don't have much that they want, but this one decided to make a play for the sunflower seeds.

Blind

Shooting pictures of critters is something that fills my idle time. With family gatherings the past few weeks, there has been little idle time. It is finally starting to quiet down, so I dragged out my "outhouse" hunting blind to see if I could get some closeup images without relying on prefocusing on a spot. I bought this blind 20-some years ago and used it a few times in my back yard in Massachusetts. I got it out here in Montana once a couple years ago, but for the most part it is easier just to let the motion trigger do the work rather than sitting in this little outhouse. So far today I've gotten a few magpies with the 500mm lens, but I'm hoping for bluebirds and maybe even the flicker later in the day.

I think I got this from the blind last time I used it in 2022.

No joy

I checked the forest cameras for the first time since July 7 and the new Browning had absolutely nothing on it. Either I put bad batteries in it or it is depleting the batteries much quicker than it should. I used a fresh set this time, and if they are dead in a month I know it is the camera.

But I did get images of moose, elk and deer with the two Reconyx. I also got a raccoon for the first time in that location, I believe, but I didn't post an image because it is hard to see. I put the old Browning #5 in a new location on a post, and it got a snapshot of a bear. I know that is a high-traffic area, but there are no appropriate trees, so I used a tomato stake and a t-post adapter.

I haven't had a camera on the backyard birdbath recently as there have been too many children running around, but that will dissipate next week and I'll see if the young bluebirds are still coming around.