Black Eyed Susans

That's the happiest thing I've seen all week. I want to jump in!

Cheers ~

Alberta

Hi Alberta,

They do look to be a happy bunch and hardy too, they often continue to bloom right up until the snow arrives.

I´m not sure how you achieved the focus here, but everything appears to be melting into a pool of fluorescence.  As Alberta mentioned, a delight.

Jeff the focus was achieved using one of my home made lens thingies. Basically I have hacked out the two elements of a viewfinder from a plastic disposable camera and affixed them to the front of my 60mm macro lens. I did this by using two fridge magnets in order to allow movement of the viewfinder in front of the lens. This set up gives a very small sweet spot of somewhat sharp focus, with a rapid fall off into distortion , vignetting and a host of optical aberrations. In this case I moved the viewfinder thingy around to position the sweet spot where it looked best and stopped down the macro lens until I liked what I saw.

I will attach a snapshot of the set up to hopefully help explain the setup.

The viewfinder cut out of the disposable camera and inserted into the fridge magnet looks like this:

Attached to my macro lens on the 40D it looks like this.

Beautiful shot and such a clever way of going about getting it! I wish I had a camera that allowed me to change out lenses so I could experiment more like you have done here. A wonderful and cheery image. Thank you for sharing. :)

Hi Trisha glad you like this one I have to admit to liking the cheerful result myself.

I've not tried this adaptation on an fixed lens P&S camera, however I believe it could work on my Canon G10 if I set the G10 to macro. The G10 pretty much goes everywhere with me and is often pressed into service for my dogs in cars series. Hmmmm now you've got me thinking about that possibility.... thanks for the visit and the new idea.

Well there is no wonder! your technical  inventions has wonderful results. I love the FG flower "huged" by the yellow "carpet" BG. Your imagination fit your technical expertise.;-))

There you go... mine are not that nice :) !

Beautiful! Regards!

Cool idea - while all the world is running after more megapixels and sharper lenses you boldly go the opposite direction and: get a great result!

I've been traveling and didn't get a chance to read through your response until today.  What a GREAT idea, one I'll have to replicate.  The result is absolutely amazing, and I would've never thought of making a makeshift attachment to a lens.  The results are laudable.  Thanks for such an instructive reply.

Pnina,

Thanks for such a glowing review.  I tried to isolate that single flower by relative distance to the others in the hopes of creating the feel of it being surrounded by a " yellow carpet "

Tatjana,

Thanks for the visit, I have to disagree and say that I think yours are very nice :-)

Dan,

So nice to hear from you!  Although I would not myself characterize  this experiment  as being brilliant it was a lot of fun and has since spawned a few more silly inventions.

Wolfgang,

Thanks for the visit.  Sometime  I find that it can be most fruitful to start a line of exploration by trying to determine a direction which would be the antithesis of the common or expected direction.

Jeff,

  No worry about timing. As you can see I have been less than punctual in my own replies.  I still owe you a response to a comment which you left on my orchid photo more than a month ago. I have given much thought to your words in that comment and have tried to compose a response several times. Each time realizing that a proper reply still requires more time to elapse.

I posted the photos and explanation on this technique  above because I strongly suspected it would be something which would interest you.  I would love to see what your explorations might produce. if you want any further clarification or suggestions feel free to drop me a line.