Hoar Frost. December 14, 2012
Posted by littlebangtheory in Art and Nature, macro photos.Tags: Florida MA, hoar frost, macro photography, Sigma 50mm f/2.8 lens
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Along a frozen dirt road in upper Florida MA, a weeping shoulder pushed its wetness skyward as the dry sky demanded tribute:
Hoar frost is by its nature dirty, and this black and white rendition dodges the visual complication of the coarse mingling of water and earth.
That one’s thanks to Ziggy, my Sigma 50mm lens, which has the shortest minimum focusing distance of the lenses in my kit, as well as a very small aperture. This was shot at f/40 for maximum depth of field without employing focus stacking HDR.
Little Bang Theory 
That photo is very cool with all its textures.
Thanks, Lisa. I took half a dozen shots, but this is the only one I liked – getting decent depth of field eluded me at this near distance, ’till I found a patch with enough light to shoot at f/40!
I attended a workshop on focus stacking last night. Every time I learn a little more about photography I admire your pictures even more.
Claire, you’ll have to clue me about that… I tried it with Ollie, my 24-105 zoom, but it didn’t work at all. I’m thinking hard about why, and have tentatively settled on the lens’ slight change of field as I focus in and out [e.g. the field of vision changes slightly with focus, and might not play well with the stacking function.]
I hope to try it again with other lenses, either my 50mm Sigma macro or my Canon 16-35mm zoom, which works internally without barrel extension.
Obviously, I’m grasping at straws here, but understanding things is the only way my mind works, so I’m looking for answers.
And thanks for your kind words about what I’m doing thus far. I hope to do more to earn them as time goes on. 😉
Supposedly the software is able to deal with that issue, and will line up the pixels of the objects in each photo when it stacks them. You are left with some fuzziness on the edges to crop out. I have a pdf file of the whole focus stacking presentation. If you’d like to see it, email me at clairz77@gmail.com so I can send it as an attachment.
Thanks Clair – I’ll do that. I thought the program attempted to align the images, but only succeeded if they were exactly the same size, i.e. could only align one part of two differently-sized images. I’d love to see what your PDF says about that (and everything else!)
LBT, love your photographs! Greenfield huh. I lived in the Brookfields for almost 30 years before moving to the sun in New Mexico. Clair is always talking about you and your blog so I looked at it and now have the feed. Thanks!
Patrick, Welcome, and thanks for commenting. I in turn checked out http://penguindroppings.blogspot.com/ and was amazed at your photos of the Organ Mountains – they/you just got added to my itinerary for my next [as yet unscheduled] Out West trip!
Your blog is delicious, and I’m herein recommending it to my readers. Keep up the excellent work, and say “Hi” to Clair for me!