Olympus 30 macro

Crazy shallow depth of field. This is a tiny bee. This thing is probably less than a quarter of an inch from extended antennae to the tip of it's tiny little stinger.

Shallow DOF

If you look close there are two strands of spider web horizontally across the frame too. There were many more but the shallow dof conceals them.

This is a tough lens to work with for extreme close up. This bee was literally almost bumping his head on the filter. I don't know how I could have possibly gotten the entire insect in focus.

Another one I tried today was an Aphid. Again, the bug is less than a quarter of an inch long and less wide yet I had fits trying to get it all in focus.

In this image of the Aphid I backed up slightly and held a small flashlight in my left hand for sidelight while I took the shot with my right.

I'm not used to working with dedicated macro lenses. The only macro I had prior to the 30 oly was my 35-135 Nikkor with an onboard macro setting. This lens will certainly take practice to get the most out of it. Any tips on how to get this lens to sing? Do I just back up and go for the crop?

Crazy Shallow DOF

Again, the DOF is measured in millimeters. Basically just part of the bee's eye is in focus.

In this image of the Aphid I backed up slightly and held a small flashlight in my left hand for sidelight while I took the shot with my right.

I'm not used to working with dedicated macro lenses. The only macro I had prior to the 30 oly was my 35-135 Nikkor with an onboard macro setting. This lens will certainly take practice to get the most out of it. Any tips on how to get this lens to sing? Do I just back up and go for the crop?

I think that is a small green assassin bug.  Those things hurt like crazy when they bite you. I have loads of the red and black ones in my yard. Feels like a fire and bite.

You are brave!

Tim Love wrote:

In this image of the Aphid I backed up slightly and held a small flashlight in my left hand for sidelight while I took the shot with my right.

I'm not used to working with dedicated macro lenses. The only macro I had prior to the 30 oly was my 35-135 Nikkor with an onboard macro setting. This lens will certainly take practice to get the most out of it. Any tips on how to get this lens to sing? Do I just back up and go for the crop?

I think that is a small green assassin bug. Those things hurt like crazy when they bite you. I have loads of the red and black ones in my yard. Feels like a fire and bite.

Dagnabbit you may be right about that. In the words of Clint Eastwood's character Inspector Callahan, "Swell". Found two of them on my dog when she came out of the brush. I had never heard of them here in Michigan. Now I know to be more cautious with these things. Here's two more images of them.

Assassin Bug?

Cute, but not so nice, apparently

Slug

Slug 2

This slug was crawling through the wet grass so I recruited him for my macro experiments. When it comes to freezing the action in macro I figured I might as well start out slow. Stopped the lens down a bit too but tried to keep ISO reasonable to mitigate noise while maintaining a manageable shutter speed.

Neither image is cropped, edited or post processed, though the second one was rotated to a portrait configuration. (The slug's agent demanded it.)

Once again I used a small flashlight to help bring out some detail.

Very interesting photos you got!

For me, in macro photography, especially in extreme macro, longer FL makes life much easier - you are further away from the subject. For insects and spiders, that is important, for the bug and for you, with some spiders!

I have recently started to use a Tamron 1:1 90 mm macro lens, that gives me a much greater freedom in my stalking of the tiny critters (but are MUCH more bulky and heavy).

Another thing that makes life a bit easier is to use smaller apertures. I go usually for f:9 or f:11, and though diffraction softening is working against you at those apertures, in my opinion (and many others much more advanced than I) the images with MFT cameras are quite sharp (if everything is OK) and the gain in DoF more than compensates tiny bit f softening. But try for yourself, don't take my word for it, your judgement is what counts!

And of course, with small apertures the light can be a problem; flash is often the only solution.

Below I show you a crop of a recent photo of a dragonfly, in a windy day, hand held, with the Tamron (it a lens with Canon mount, I use a Metabones adapter.

(Picture in next post)

Here is the picture:

Tim Love wrote:

I think that is a small green assassin bug. Those things hurt like crazy when they bite you. I have loads of the red and black ones in my yard. Feels like a fire and bite.

Thanks for the heads up. I won't try and have one pose on my finger now.

paul613 wrote:

You are brave!

Nope. Apparently just misinformed. If I'd have known I was facing down a bug named assassin I'd have been breaking out the RAID.

Helen wrote:

I like those! You got a good d-o-f for that second one. You could try out the E-M10 II's built-in focusing bracketing feature, as long as your subjects aren't in motion as you shoot. I find it works pretty well (I use Helicon Focus for the processing but many other options are available, some free I believe). You can actually even use the built-in flash (despite being forced to silent shutter mode) for focus bracketing - even more fun to be had there, as you need to use it in manual output mode (but there are multiple fractional outputs available - close up, the smallest are sometimes still too much, and the maximum sync is only 1/20, so it can be quite challenging).

It's a bit of a balancing act, using macro lenses. The shorter focal length of the 30mm means that technically the d-o-f is a bit more generous than on the 60mm Macro, but the working distance needs to be much closer so that offsets the advantage, largely. Mind you, things were MUCH harder back in 35mm film days (I'm that old!) - and so presumably they are similarly somewhat more difficult for full-frame digital users too.

Thank you. And thank you for the tips. The built in flash would be an issue with this lens. The distance from the filter to the subject was literally millimeters. It would have been in the lens shadow. Focus bracketing is something I have yet to try but I intend to do that at some point. Right now I'm just trying to get a feel for the limitations and capabilities of the lens without that step.

it looks like you are enjoying yours as much as I am mine

I sold my 60mm macro to a friend but then decided I did want a dedicated macro after all. I'm enjoying it more than the 60mm for some strange reason

I'm finding that using the focus limiter on the EM-1 mk2, set from .1 to 2 metres and CAF + tracking at 18fps hand-held works a treat

richj20 wrote:

will focus wrote:

I'm not used to working with dedicated macro lenses. The only macro I had prior to the 30 oly was my 35-135 Nikkor with an onboard macro setting. This lens will certainly take practice to get the most out of it. Any tips on how to get this lens to sing? Do I just back up and go for the crop?

Hello will,

I'm a fan of the normal focal length macro lens (40 mm - 60 mm in Full Frame specs) -- it goes back to my film days and the marvelous Nikkor 55mm macro lens.

Not so much with insects though -- mostly flowers -- since the working distance is quite close.

If you want the entire insect in focus, you need to experiment with smaller apertures. Set up a test of an object with lots of detail, and photograph at all apertures to see at what point effects of diffraction bother you.

In many cases, you just have to back up, and crop when editing.

In cropping, you are limited by the small sensor, of course, so there is a trade-off!

You can experiment with some of the focus stacking stuff if the insect doesn't move around much.

Best of success in your macro endeavors! It is really a fun type of photography.

- Richard

Thank you for the input. I am looking forward to doing more macro stuff. It would seem to be a perfect photographic outlet for the winter months when outdoor stuff may be a challenge.

Pedagydusz wrote:

Very interesting photos you got!

For me, in macro photography, especially in extreme macro, longer FL makes life much easier - you are further away from the subject. For insects and spiders, that is important, for the bug and for you, with some spiders!

I have recently started to use a Tamron 1:1 90 mm macro lens, that gives me a much greater freedom in my stalking of the tiny critters (but are MUCH more bulky and heavy).

Another thing that makes life a bit easier is to use smaller apertures. I go usually for f:9 or f:11, and though diffraction softening is working against you at those apertures, in my opinion (and many others much more advanced than I) the images with MFT cameras are quite sharp (if everything is OK) and the gain in DoF more than compensates tiny bit f softening. But try for yourself, don't take my word for it, your judgement is what counts!

And of course, with small apertures the light can be a problem; flash is often the only solution.

Below I show you a crop of a recent photo of a dragonfly, in a windy day, hand held, with the Tamron (it a lens with Canon mount, I use a Metabones adapter.

(Picture in next post)

Thank you for that, and great shot of that dragonfly!

Brian Wadie wrote:

it looks like you are enjoying yours as much as I am mine

I sold my 60mm macro to a friend but then decided I did want a dedicated macro after all. I'm enjoying it more than the 60mm for some strange reason

I'm finding that using the focus limiter on the EM-1 mk2, set from .1 to 2 metres and CAF + tracking at 18fps hand-held works a treat

Wow! Fantastic shot of that fly. He looks like his face is shoelaced together.

I don't think I have a focus limiter on the em10ii, do I? I have been using the auto focus feature but for the slug application I'm more inclined to think I may try manual focus next time and more the camera until I see what I want. The auto focus was chasing the focus point and I had a number of clear shots of the slug's back instead of it's head.

Thanks, sorry Will I missed that you have the 10, makes a great light-weight combo. Manual focus is nice with the 30mm, it handles very well

Slug

One more slug shot with the oly 30mm macro. This one is a slight crop and tweeked a little in Faststone.