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Posts Tagged ‘zoom’

Caption:

Dragonflies in Thassos

Description:

These dragonflies were in a marshy spot in the grounds of the Agora or ancient public square in Thassos.

Thassos is known as the emerald isle because of an abundance of grass and trees.

It is the most northerly island of the Aegean group and is just opposite the mainland Greek town of Kavala

If you want to use this stock photo of Dragonflies in the Agora in Thassos go to Alamy

Photo Comments:

I have a strong interest in macro and wildlife photography.

One corner of the Agora or ancient meeting place in Thassos was marshland and an ideal habitat for dragonflies.

I made a number of trips in the early morning, evening and mid day to check when the dragonflies would be active or resting.

One problem was that the ground was really marshy and I could not get too close even if the dragonflies had put up with me.

Dragonflies, like other living creatures have a comfort zone and will take no notice of other creatures – even humans if they stay outside.

I had my macro lens with me, my favourite Canon 100mm and I was using a crop sensor camera which provided a focal length equivalent to about 140mm in 35mm terms.

I took some good photos with this combination but I was still not able to reach into the centre of the marsh and get close enough.

For this picture I switched to my 80-200mm Canon zoom and used a close up attachment.

This gave me both the distance and magnification that I needed.

It seems to me that the use of macro lenses has changed with digital imaging.

In the past I would have used my macro lens to photograph stamps, postcards, old bookplates and other things which needed a flat field and great overall sharpness.

Nowadays, unless I need some particular lighting effect, I just use my flatbed scanner.

The point is that for many macro shots it’s not important to have corner to corner sharpness as most of the picture area is an out of focus background.

This means that a zoom lens with a close up attachment, if stopped down a bit, can provide excellent image quality.

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In my first blog of this year I started to look at mirror images.

Just in case it’s not clear what I mean it’s when I take an original image and then taking only half of that image flip it over to provide a symmetrical image by joining the two halves.

So why should we do this?

there are a number of reasons and I’m planning to have a look at some of them in posts to come.

Some reasons are aesthetic and some are technical.

One more thing is that this is a technique that refines as time goes by and results in a whole range of unique images.

I came upon this idea quite by chance in my pre digital days. Clearly though it’s possible to print images like this mostly it depends on digital manipulation.

Here’s how it started for me.

It was in the 1970s and I was staying in Munich, one of Germany’s finest cities. I decided to try to get a view over the Olympic park by climbing to the top of the Olympic tower at night.

It was cold and windy and I just hoped my tripod – a Slick 88 – was sturdy enough for the job. At the time I was using a Konica Autoreflex with a 70-150 mm Tamron zoom lens with separate zoom and focus rings.

Looking over the parapet I saw the illuminated building of the BMW works, one of the landmarks of Munich, with its tower built like the cylinders of a car engine.

I took several shots and then decided to try some in camera long exposure zoom shots.

I’m assuming many photographers will understand this technique but in a nutshell what happens is that you zoom the lens from wide to tele or tel to wide at the same time as giving a long exposure. This technique is easier with a two ring zoom as there’s less chance of shifting the focus.

Anyway I was pleased with some of my images and decided to work on this technique.

The day came when I decided to make the move to digital imaging – originally by scanning my films.

I bought a Minolta scanner and suddenly I found I was able to manipulate my images in ways that were impossible before.

Here’s one of the resultant images.

What had started out as a record shot of a cityscape at night became an abstract image.

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