gardenersassistant

Thanks Malcolm. That Iris is one of my favourite flowers in our garden. It was a gift from our next door neighbour 15 years or so ago before we moved to our current house. It has given both of us a ...

Thanks Ken. Experimenting is good. At least I think so. I find it very enjoyable. Over the past few days I've been experimenting with some rather small subjects, 3mm long flies on our tiny pond. I ...

It's a pleasure. :) Maybe not typical. I looked through and tried to pick some nice ones to use as examples, but I don't think they give an unfair impression of the sort of results I got from that ...

With a telezoom lens like your 70-350, close-up lenses will probably work best. (Extension tubes are generally better with shorter focal length lenses.) There are two sorts of close-up lenses. Clos ...

Be warned, for some people close-up macro can be addictive (and no, I'm not joking). Yes, up to a point. Extension tubes have more impact on magnification when used on shorter focal length lenses. ...

I went out in the garden yesterday to look for some very small insects to photograph. Before I got round to that I got sidetracked for a while by a couple of flowers. These images were captured ...

Yes, when at the nearest focusing distance. (I don't know if that would be 30cm.) Focusing distance is generally given in terms of the distance between the sensor and the subject. What matters more ...

My bad. Didn't read the question carefully enough. You are right. They are screw-on.

I use the screen almost all the time. As with all my other cameras, depending on where the sun is in relation to the screen it can be difficult to see it well in bright sunshine, and sometimes ...

There are many single-layer close-up filters, but I'll assume you are only interested in multi-layer achromats like the Raynoxes. For reference as to power/magnification (more diopters, more ...

Pixel Pooper has mentioned small apertures or stacking as options. and MacM545 has mentioned tilt-shift as another option. I'm not familiar with the use of tilt-shift for close-up/macro. I don't ...

That's what I do, for invertebrates (but not for botanical subjects; different considerations apply there, for me at least). Mind you, f/22 isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Setting the lens ...

I was very curious about why Don's hi-res result was so poor, so I did a somewhat similar comparison. My only full frame camera is an A7ii. The only mFT camera I have that does hi-res is a G9. So ...

Quite so. And that is why I am happy to use a small sensor bridge camera with close-up lenses rather than one of my (mFT, APS-C or FF) + high quality macro lens setups for invertebrate macros, ...

From your description of what happens it sounds to me as though the aperture is being set smaller than you dialled in. It looks like there is a problem with the lens regarding under-exposure on ...

Thanks for the feedback Steven. That is helpful, and reassuring. Thank you. Interesting. I had almost zero latitude for the angle on the subject, which rather did for any flexibility as to  ...

I just checked. It looks like those are one stop divisions. Shots at 1/32, 1/64 and 1/28 were separated by one complete division. So yes, I think you are reading the histograms correctly. Not sure ...

Not sure how relevant it is for an evidence-based approach, but since you have mentioned your background I might as well mention that I shoot active invertebrates in the field, up to and including ...

Thanks Fulvio. :)

I've calibrated my diffuser by photographing an 18% grey card and then using the white balance dropper in PhotoLab to see what it thinks the Temp and Tine values should be. I now use those values ...