Shot on a frosty morn'

[Dave Humphries]

Hi all,

I spent a fair chunk of Saturday morning crawling around on the lawn in the backyard, why?

So I could have a first go at some frost pics with a proper Macro lens - a bit of a learning curve and shooting hand held probably wasn't wise

The EXIF data has no aperture info recorded, well it says "f1", but I think it was fooled The lens is an old film era AI-S 55mm f2.8 Micro Nikkor, so no chip, no aperture EXIF, I was shooting between f8 & f16 mostly. The lens also doesn't allow metering on my camera, so exposure was trial and error reading the histogram and adjusting manually. Like I said; a learning curve

No.1: One for scale to start with; a dead leaf on the lawn with frozen dew, or frost, on:


No.2: Who knew frost was this fascinating?:


No.3: Ragged end of decayed grass lying across a dead leaf:


No.4: Blades of grass - just to prove somethings are still alive in my garden :


My plans for a reshoot this morning were thwarted by rain another day I guess

C&C welcome

[benm]

Amazingly sharp! I'm sure you know that that lens is legendary - one of the best lenses ever made by Nikon or in fact anyone.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Ben,

Thanks, but I had to work quite hard at the sharpening to get them looking reasonable, but that's probably camera shake (these four shot at 1/180 or 1/125), or mis-focusing with narrow DoF.

Some of these were quite severe crops to get the magnification up.

Cheers,

[arith]

I only use the meter for guessing a first go anyway, and use the histogram to fine tune best I can with knowledge of reds and right handed exposure. These are very sharp, I'm impressed. cheers

[ScoutR]

My plans for a reshoot this morning were thwarted by rain another day I guess

Nice start! I'm looking forward to following your progress with this lens and any tricks you come up with for working with it. The detail is incredible and you seem to have it pretty well figured out. Hope you soon get time for a reshoot.

[batman44]

These are awesome!!! I just love how sharp they are!!!!!

[Dave Humphries]

Nice start! I'm looking forward to following your progress with this lens and any tricks you come up with for working with it. The detail is incredible and you seem to have it pretty well figured out. Hope you soon get time for a reshoot.

Thanks, to you all, a couple of bonus shots here and there are more in my PBase gallery (link in my signature)

No.5: 1/250s at iso 800 - I was aiming to show the beautiful colours caused by the prism effect in the sunlight on this one and so in PP I boosted the saturation significantly on the crystals and attempted to hold back on the leaf itself, I feel it didn't quite come off, I think I need to be closer.


No.6: 1/250s at iso 400 - A bit of dead grass 'wrapped around' the crystals


Don't hold back on the critique of all the compositions though; I have cropped and often rotated to achieve what I think works, but do let me know if you disagree. In PBase there is an alternate crop of the last one above for comparison.

Thanks all,

[Keith]

No.3 and No4 work for me Dave, although I might have preferred No4 as a portrait or even maybe at 30-45 degrees.
I really must be more inventive with my photography, when I see images of arranged scouring sponges and macros of frost that really appeal to me I just wonder why I can't come up with ideas like that myself.
Good work though.

[ScoutR]

Hi Dave: I've played around a bit with the last shot. It's the one I like the best. I really had no plan but just wanted to see what I could do. I can't say it's better but I think the ice is a bit more translucent. Aside from cropping and flipping it horizontally, I increased the vibrance setting in LR and ended up with a slightly inverted S-Curve in the tone controls. On most shots I increase highlights and decrease darks, but doing the opposite on this seemed to bring out the clarity in the crystals a bit.
Like I said, just playing around, so please don't be upset if I've messed it up.

No.4: Blades of grass - just to prove somethings are still alive in my garden :

[Dave Humphries]

~ I really must be more inventive with my photography, when I see images of arranged scouring sponges and macros of frost that really appeal to me I just wonder why I can't come up with ideas like that myself.
Good work though.

Thanks for the feedback Keith, I thought No.2 and No.3 were going to be the strongest compositionally.

I know what you mean about the scouring pads now that is inventive.

This is just something I had done eons ago, in a far distant galaxy, re-invented when I had access to the specialist lens necessary.

Cheers,

[Dave Humphries]

~ Aside from cropping and flipping it horizontally, I increased the vibrance setting in LR and ended up with a slightly inverted S-Curve in the tone controls. On most shots I increase highlights and decrease darks, but doing the opposite on this seemed to bring out the clarity in the crystals a bit.
Like I said, just playing around, so please don't be upset if I've messed it up.

Hi Wendy,

There does seem to be a better clarity and sharpness to the crystals on (what is now) the bottom edge, I detect, flicking between the two, that the overall scene is dimmer in yours, but this helps with the crystals. I haven't figured it out exactly, but "upset" isn't what I am, more intrigued. I can let you have a fullsize RAW of one if you like? Or make one of these the PP challenge?

Thanks,

[ScoutR]

I can let you have a fullsize RAW of one if you like? Or make one of these the PP challenge?

I think we are due for another PP challenge.

[arith]

Yes that is right, to raise standards this is the place to be. I love these challenges just because it raises standards. cheers wendy