Day 5 - Macro photography (Olde Skool)

Today's challenge was perhaps more technical then artistic.

Using this lense - a Tamron SP 90mm f2.5 Macro on my Nikon D70 I planned to take some close-ups or Macro photography as its called.




The challenge is that the lense was made between 1979 -88 and so has none of the devices which speed up today's digital photography. No autofocus, no automatic shutter and aperture control and no link to the cameras light meter. So I was left to old fashioned judgements of speed and aperture but with two lifesaving pieces of technology. First the picture histogram which analyses the light falling on the sensor. By taking multiple pictures at different exposures (keeping shutter speed fixed and as low as possible) it was possible to get the histogram slap in the middle and so be sure exposure was within the limits that could be sorted by in the processing with Photoshop. The second advantage I had was I could take as many pictures as I needed to because of digital technology.




The results took a little bit of time to work through but the full set of photos from that evening in the garden are worthwhile as a first effort. I will do more.

See the full set here

And here are a couple of samples