Camera Labs

To rule them all and in the darkness bind them...

LOL

Hi,

Just enjoying my two new Raynox macro lenses - DCR-150 and DCR-250. These images below are taken with the DCR-150 mounted on my 55-200mm VR lens. The rings are presented on a piece of driftwood from the beach. It's barely visible here. The sun and water almost bleached out the color of this wood and it looks - this close and with the LEDs - like rock.


(ISO400, F25, 1/4sec, 110mm)
With this shot, I used two LED work lights one close and above left, another at half-strength some distance away above left. At the far left, a tungsten spot offers the orange catch-lights. The LEDs gives a slightly bluish color-cast, which I tried to counter by post-processing it with a magenta filter. I was trying to make the silver rings look like they were made of steel and give the image a look akin to the soldiers of Gondor.




(ISO400, F11, 1/10sec, 145mm)
With this shot two LED work lights at full power, above and to either side of the rings, but pushed a little further beyond the rings to keep the front-detail. The F11 gives a more shallow DOF and the 145mm brings me a little closer. I was aiming for an "Old World Silver" look. In post-processing I softened the blacks a little and added a hint of dark blue tinting to the shadows to avoid a B&W look.


[b]
(ISO400, F11, 1/5sec, 145mm)
With this shot, I used two tungstens - one the right and above and another from the far left and lower, which gives these orange cast to the light. Setting the white balance with the LED I used in the fron of the left ring, gave me the this color-blend of the light - but alas also an unrecoverable blown out highlight on the cross. My ambition was to create a "Dragons Lair Treasure" look to the rings. Silver rings in a room full of gold, so to speak..lol.

What better way to spend an evening indoors than living in your own fantasy world while photographing, eh? Now on to Mordor

Cheers!

i like the last one, the color is awesome!, #2 looks like way too much bokeh for my liking =(, lol i know its the same pic as #3, but the color throughs that out.

Yep my fave is #3 the colour definitely helps with the razor thin DoF - nice intense colours from those LEDs gives a feel of deep in the fiery caverns, Ooh! might have to try something like that when I get round to completing a new series on the LoTR statues

Nice work mate, out of interest how are you finding the 250? I was seriously considering getting one the other week but decided to wait it out a while (mainly because of the outlay of the 70-200).

_________________
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Hi,

thank you for the kind words


smiles77: yeah, the depth of field on a tele-lens like the 55-200 is quite narrow. Especially with low FStop#.

Mark-A: To be quite honest, I'm thinking that the DCR-250 is almost too good in the sense that the magnification is so great that it's only usable for ultra-specialized purposes. Even with F20+ the DOF is so razor thin that the only subject it lends itself to is insect-eyes.

I find myself using the DCR-150 more often, since it'll allow me to get close to small objects but still keep them recognizable on the image. The DR-250 - even on my 18-55 is too much, most of the time.

Fortunately they are not that expensive - about 39-42$ a piece. I'm still happy I got both.

Amazingly, they both produce what to me seems like high image quality, in the sense that I don't see any noticeable vignetting of distortion and although the DOF is shallow, they are very sharp and resolve good details.

I look forward to seeing more of your LOTR statues in macro shots...if we keep this up, we might get a gig with the makers of Dungeons and Dragons for their product catalog..lol.

Cheers