Macro Kickoff 2018

March 2, 2018 ChrisA

I kicked off the years outdoor macro last weekend with my annual visit to Garston Wood to take some Snowdrops and to try a first hunt for leaf litter bugs.

For an overview of the spot – I took this shot of the location.

Wide angle shot of the Garston Wood Snowdrops

I always start with the Snowdrops – and this year I took along two lenses for the flowers. My Canon 100mm F2.8 USM Macro and Laowa 15mm F4 Wide Angle 1:1 Macro lens.

The lens I started with was my wide-angle one, taking some close wide angle shots of a clump of Snowdrops by the tree. I also remembered this year to bring along my low tripod, which really does help get low and steady with flowers.

Here are the first wide angle ones.

I then moved on to my 100mm lens, making the most of the nice sunlight that was popping through.

This next image is a merge of two – the in focus and an out of focus shot. Then tinted in Topaz Studio ( Texture Effects ).

The final 100mm shot being a very wide open image.

Before I went an took a final wide-angle shot as the afternoon light started to lower.

Next it was onto a bug hunt in the very cold leaf litter. For this I used my Canon MPE-65mm 1-5x Macro lens, with a taped up damaged Canon MT-24ex Twin Macro Flash. The damage is a crack in the plastic casing. (=:

The first “bug” was one of two arthropods I found. A centipede. This is around 3x magnification.