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 ⇍   June 4th, 2006   ⇏ 

Copyright 2006 Michael Anttila

This weekend we had a big garage sale to try to get rid of all the extra furniture and junk that was left over after the move. We did quite well, actually, but we still have tons of stuff left, so if you need any miscellaneous junk, just ask.

Today, I felt like I needed to get out of the house, so while Angela did homework I offered to make a quick run to IKEA to pick up some more placemats. On the way back, I randomly pulled off the highway and headed for the nearest conservation area. After briefly getting lost, I managed to find Burns Conservation Area.

After my previous experiments with holding a reversed 50mm lens in front of my kit lens, I decided to take Aravind's advice and get a cheap step-down reversing ring on eBay. Today was my chance to try out the reversing ring in the field. While strolling through the conservation area, taking extreme closeups of flowers and leaves, I noticed this common fly resting on a leaf. I figured it would fly away when I got close, but it stood its ground even though my lens was only about a centimetre away from it. I was able to snap away for a couple of minutes while the fly did nothing except extend and retract its proboscis a few times.

Due to the awkward angle of the sun, the fact that I don't have a good macro flash setup, the fact that the leaf/fly combination was constantly being blown around by the wind, and the incredibly shallow depth of field you get when you use this reverse macro setup, I had to bump the ISO to 1600 and reduce the aperture of the kit lens to f/22 just to get a clear shot. It was fun though... cheap thrills indeed!

Shot with my Rebel XT + 18-55 kit lens + reversed 50mm 1.8 Mark II at 55mm (kit), ISO 1600, f/22 (kit), for 1/250th of a second. I also pushed it half a stop and ran it through Noise Ninja before resizing and sharpening for the web.

Comments

Very cool and well done!
-- Aravind at 10:55pm, Sunday June 4, 2006 EST

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