About photography Number 3

[Kiya]

I would never have guessed that was a sunflower....clever shot

And hairy bee too! good one .

[Horus]

Even though I have macro and super macro on my best camera, I decided to try some of the magnifiers that Brian has been using. I found a set on the Amazon site that were dirt cheap, the set comprised 1X 2X 4X & 10X. Macro
As they were so cheap I decided to look for a circular polarising filter to justify the P&P.
I had seen a set of 3 that looked OK and comprised a UV, FLD and Circular Polarizing Filter. I was about to buy the two sets when I spotted another supplier offering the two sets together (seven in total) for £9.99 including P&P
So I ordered a set Now they will either be total crap, or the best buy this year, so sometime after midweek I will report back

[LovelyLadyLux]

Could be the proverbial "steal of a deal" H!! Hope they work well for you!

[bigken]

Heres one of a single red poppy i have in the garden



and i've put a few more snaps on my flickr site

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29778292@N04/sets/

[Horus]

Nice picture Ken save me some seeds
Just had a look at your Flickr albums and the 'Brother in Law' folder contains some really good photographs You have captured the wildness of the area very well, love the one of the Goshawk as it is landing against the wind. The detail of the grass blowing in the background adds to the effect, excellent

[Kiya]

Lovely poppy whereabouts does your brother in law live? very nice pics in his album.

[Kiya]

Just been looking through some pics I took over the last few days of my view, I picked what I thought was reasonable pics ...all .jpegs, the coloured & B&W ones I worked in Raw to add some vibrance, the b&w looked better as b&w.
After seeing Grandad's lovely panorama I tried for myself....my 1st ever panorama, the pics were taken last night for the P just before dark, I reduced the size on camera 1st perhaps I shouldn't have ?? to give me a bigger P & better quality at the finish.

[Bearded Brian]

Love the clouds in number 3. Nearly missed the panarama - pity we can't see it larger - did zoom in but then the quality goes - I wonder if you could host the picture on say flikr and then put the link on here? As has been said before you are so lucky to live is such a place - unless I get in the car and drive out of Luton there are very few views worth looking at.

[Kiya]

Yes I have a lovely view but gets a bit monotonous sometimes. Never been on Flikr & would worry computer going very slow recently & don't want to add more probs.
This 1 taken about an hr ago but it doden't do much for the horizon.
I'm not sure how I can get it bigger, camera set at biggest sized photo this time.

[Grandad]

I agree Brian, I would love to have views like that from my home.

I am a bit of a mono buff and love the B & W view. And the panorama, well Kiya I copied it for a closer look and can't see the joins....how many images make up that view?

I have just signed up on Flickr this afternoon following Bigkens introduction. Have only put a few on so far just to establish my sets but will be adding to them when I sort out what I am happy to go public.

I think you will have seen my first postings because they are in a recently used album and it was easy to use them, but I can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/raddang/

[Grandad]

Kiya, are you saying that is a single image with the camera set to panorama??????
If so you could get exactly the same effect by cropping a full image down to panorama size.

Oh! And PS.....why not start adding some exif data with your pictures. I would like to know what focal length etc you are using.....

PPS....Just looked at the B & W again.....love it.

[Kiya]

I think it was 7 photos I used on both the panorama's, I couldn't avoid the lamp posts....arghh! I hate them.
Also I'll try & remember to add some exif data next time I upload.
Shall try out Flickr tomorrow & see how computer runs.......

Grandad checked out your photos on Flickr you have beautiful sharp colours

[bigken]

Thank you Horus, is this the picture you was on about ?



Kiya he lives in a village called Hudswell not far from Richmond in North Yorkshire, all of the land around him belongs to the MoD, but he has a permit from them so he can go on the land with his bird ( of prey) and dogs as long as there is no red flag on show,

Grandad Love the photos you've put on flickr

[Grandad]

Cheers Ken and can I just say ML-L3 is working well.

And that lovely picture with the hawk is SO suited to mono. It would be very ordinary in colour and lose the drama.

[Horus]

That's the one Ken I can almost feel the wind blowing against the grass and the hawk struggling to land in the gale! Great picture

And ......... nice dramatic skies Kiya

[Horus]

As I said earlier in the week, I would let you know whether or not the Macro filters and other filters that I ordered from Amazon were a steal or a load of rubbish.

Well I received them today, they came by post and that was very good as I only ordered them on Sunday evening, even better the P&P was included in the price.
The price seemed ludicrously low for the items on offer which if you recall was a set of Macro filters (in my case 58mm diameter) comprising of X1, X2, X4 & x10 magnification.

The other item included was a 3piece set of filters comprising of a UV (very useful on its own to just protect your camera lens) A FLD filter (used to eliminate the green tint on pictures taken under bright fluorescent light) and a Circular Polarising Filter (mainly used to eliminate the glare from water)

If you wish to buy them or just have a look, paste the following into the Amazon UK (camera section) search bar.

1 "7pc 58mm Filter Kit - Four Macro Filters, UV, FLD and Polarizing Filters for ANY 58mm Camera Lens!"
£9.99

The goods in general
Well I have to say that I am amazed at the quality of what you get for a tenner.
Both sets, the macro (magnification) filters & the UV, FLD & Polarising filters both came with a smashing little (imitation?) leather box that has a separate soft compartment for each filter, a very nice touch.
All of the filter bodies are blacked metal (Probably aluminium) and each has the relevant information printed on it. The most surprising thing is that they are all double threaded, meaning that they too can have another filter attached to themselves, i.e. they are threaded front and back, more common in better quality items.
All of the macro filters appear to be glass and not acrylic material and the optical finish looks very good quality.

I cannot be certain about the other filters and some may be made from something other than glass but each one is of a reasonable weight and certainly not cheap looking.
I compared my own ‘Jessops’ UV filter with this new one and to be honest there does not appear to be much difference although the Jessops filter does just have a slight edge on quality, but there again it did cost a lot more that I paid for all of these filters put together.

All threads were smooth and the finish is excellent, a point worth noting is that when using a circular polarising filter, it is very easy to actually unscrew the filter from your camera when rotating the outer ring of the filter to get the best results. It is a good idea to make a habit of always turning the ring in an ant-clockwise direction (to you looking forwards) when using it, as that way you can never accidentally unscrew it from your camera.
It is best to test this filter by looking at your TV and rotating the lens, you should then be able to see the polarising effect of this filter.

The Macro Filters
On my camera I have ‘Macro’ & ‘Super Macro’ in the later mode I can actually touch the object being photographed. I was not sure if these magnifying filters would make much difference if you already had the ‘Macro’ function on your camera to start with, so I devised the following test using the flower of a Mimula.

1. I would take a picture with my camera set on ‘Auto’ and only take the picture at a distance that the camera said was OK (by using the camera indicator light). This gave me my closest normal picture.

2. Next I took a picture using ‘Macro’ and again set to ‘Auto’ using the above criteria. This gave me my closest picture using this setting.

3. I now used my ‘Super Macro’ setting, again on ‘Auto’ and was able to actually touch the flower petals with my camera lens. This gave me my closest picture using Super macro.

4. Finally, I attached the X10 Macro filter and with the camera setting still on ‘Super Macro’ I was able to move away from the subject and then zoom into the flower to get the last picture. Using the zoom had a limited range in which it would focus, but it is clear that the magnification and detail has increased.
Sorry about the quality, I was using a desk lamp to illuminate the flower on my desk.







So overall I would say they were an exceptionally good buy and recommend that anyone wishing to improve their macro photography should buy them, they are a real bargain at the price they are being offered at. Elsewhere on the site they are asking £12 just for the macro filters alone!

[Grandad]

Looks like a steal to me Horus...For a tenner you surely can't go wrong.

And with no macro at all on my lenses I would even use the other magnifications.

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

[Grandad]

I have never had much success with panoramas. This image comprises 11 successive exposures on auto, of a 180 degree sweep. Although I stitched them together with PSP reasonably well there was too much still to do to make it worth the effort.



I have now had the opportunity to try the same exercise with PSE7 with amazing results. I should have resized the same 11 exposures before letting PSE7 do its best because it took ages and ended up as a 500mb file. But the result was well worthwhile.



I look forward to using this function on some nice landscapes in future.

[Horus]

It certainly looks a lot better in PSE7 than the PSP stitch
I have never used that particular function in PSP myself as I have another program on my PC that does it quite well, so I tend to use that instead.
Look forward to a few more from you Grandad

[Grandad]

You must excuse my exhuberance but I think I am going to have fun with this panorama thing.

Just remembered that I tried to do a panorama at the back of Luxor temple looking towards McDonalds and Sinbads. This was April 2009. The results when I got home were disappointing and I forgot about it....

Have just put the 7 shots into PSE7 and this is the result. The originals were hand held and not particularly well taken but I am amazed how PSE7 found the common details and stitched them together....



PS. I put this pic in Photos of Luxor to see if it helped my posting problem, Obviously not

I am posting the link again via IE, here goes



Now someone tell me why they have both opened?????????