Month: April 2020

Super Macro During the Time of Covid

Nature does not stop during this time of Covid-19. I was self-isolating and working in my garden when a monarch butterfly flew by me and laid eggs on a nearby milkweed plant. The eggs were so small that it was hard to show them of my husband and my neighbor.

My husband, Gary Clark, decided to write about monarch butterflies for his weekly Nature column in the Houston Chronicle. I provide the photos for his articles so that meant I needed to take a picture of the extremely tiny monarch eggs.

Plan 1 —

I started the process of photographing the monarch egg by bringing the pot with milkweed inside.

For my first try, I used a 70-200mm lens with a Movo reversing adapter. This allows you to put your lens on backwards and shoot through the end of the lens that usually attaches to the camera.

Reversing the lens allows you to focus close and get higher magnification.

In this photo you see a flash on the left, flower pot with the milkweed, an artifical background held in place with a Wimberley plamp, milkweed held in place with another Wimberley plamp, and the camera lens.

  • Monarch eggs from the set-up above.
  • Monarch eggs from the set-up above.

The egg is not big enough and focusing is hard so I have to try something different.

Plan 2 —

I leave the Wimberley plamps in place and the flash in place.

I change the lens to a Canon 24-105mm lens. This is not a “high magnification” lens but I’m going to make it one.

I add a 12mm extension tube and a Canon 500D close-up lens. This is a filter and not a lens. It goes on the front of the lens and allows you to focus super close.

Here’s an blog post I wrote about this combination.

Monarch eggs with Canon 24-105mm lens with 12mm extension tube to allow me to focus closer. A Canon 500D close-up filter is added to the front of the lens to allow me to get even closer.

Plan 3 — The egg is not as big as I want. I can see the ridges on the egg but I want to get closer.

I contact Camera Lens Rental and order the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens.

This is not your ordinary macro lens. It’s a speciality lens that will photograph from 1:1 life size to 5-times life size.

1:1 life size means the subject is the same size in life as it is on a full-frame sensor.

5-times life size means the subject is five times as big on a full-frame sensor as it is in real life.

Depth-of-field is super narrow even at f/16. A focusing rail in needed to ensure the subject is in focus. (Note: One more thing to buy.)

  • Monarch egg at life size or 1:1
  • Same monarch eggs at 2x life size
  • Same monarch egg at 3x life size
  • Same monarch egg at 4x life size
Same monarch egg at 5x life size. Not cropped.
Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens, 250 shutter, f/16, ISO 400, three flashes at -2.3 powers

The photo above is what I had in mind when I started this project. I just needed the right equipment to capture my vision.

Final equipment list for one monarch egg: Canon 5D Mark IV, MeFoto Globetrotter tripod, Neewer Pro 4 Way Focusing Rail Slider, Canon MP-E 65mm lens, two light stands, three Wimberley plamps, two Canon 220 mini flashes, one Canon ST-R2 Speedlight transmitter.

Thanks to the folks at Camera Lens Rental for getting the lens to me so fast and for being open in the Covid-19 lock-down.

Do I Need to Learn Photoshop?

Photoshop came first from Adobe.
Everything that any creative person needed in one place.

The Photoshop program is becoming less and less needed.  At one time, all the tools were in Photoshop.  

Then Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw came along.
Organization and sliders in Adobe Camera Raw to process our photos.

Then Adobe made Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) and moved Photoshop’s photography tools into sliders.  We had everything we needed to process our photos in one place.  Adobe gave us Bridge as a “light table” where we could layout all our photos and work with them.

Then Adobe made Elements and put photography tools into sliders.  

Then Lightroom came along from Adobe

Then Adobe made Lightroom and put those same photography tools into sliders.  Lightroom took the Bridge concept to a new level.  Lightroom’s Library is a database so you can layout lots of photos from different folders onto a “light table” and work with them.

Lightroom’s Library is super-powerful and super-complicated.  I recommend the Scott Kelby book to learn and understand Library.  Life gets complicated when you update computers, work on two external hard drives, merge or split catalogues, etc.  Sometimes you have to call in an expert because the Library is a mess.

Thanks to Adobe we have three programs to process our photos.  

·         Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw, 

·         Elements, or 

·         Lightroom.  

The one you choose is up to you.  Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom do exactly the same thing when it comes to processing.  The difference is interface.  

Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw lets you file your photos the way you want.  

Lightroom files your photos for you and you need to understand what it’s doing.  Hence the need for Scott Kelby’s book, lots of online videos, The Lightroom Queen, etc.  I tell people on my workshops “I will not help you find your lost photos in Lightroom.  I will help you process your photos in Lightroom.”  If you use Lightroom, take time to understand the Library feature.  In my experience, this happens in only 25% of Lightroom users.  

Personally, I find the Bridge/Adobe Camera Raw combination easier to use.  I copy my pictures from my card to a folder under My Pictures, open Bridge, go to that folder, start processing.  Simple and easy.  The 25% who understand Lightroom’s Library say the same thing about Lightroom.  (The Lightroom versus Adobe Camera Raw argument is amazing among photographers.  More powerful than Mac vs. PC or Canon vs. Nikon.)

But what about Photoshop?  Photoshop has Layers and we still occasionally need layers.  There are still photographers who use layers to make vignettes even though we have a slider for vignette in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw.  There are still photographers who use Layers to open shadows despite the great shadow slider in Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom.  

Layers in Photoshop are needed for a lot of advanced processing.  Merging star trails, for example.  Merging lightning strikes for a more dramatic photo, for example.  Photos with light painting need layers.  We can make a mat for our photos in Layers.  Good stuff happens in Layers and we can only get that in Photoshop.  

We need Photoshop Layers to blend multiple photos like this lightning storm or star trails.

At one time, we could only get panoramas with Layers.  Now we have a feature in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw for that.   

I’ll offer a Photoshop Layers class in the coming weeks.  Layers is a powerful tool but has a steep learning curve.  I’m not a master but know how to get what I need – most of the time. 

Check out my class schedule at www.kathyadamsclark.com