K Marie Studios

So do what helps you sleep.

Today I finally sat down and took care of a bit of paperwork that’s been hanging around for….well…longer than I want to blast all over the web.

It wasn’t really keeping me up at night, but it was one of those things that would pop into my mind at a random moment—like when I was falling asleep—then, of course, wouldn’t necessarily come to mind at more advantageous times. Anyway, it wasn’t a huge deal, but it’s good to stay on top of the small things.

Cool thing is, when I was messing around trying to take a picture of my morning’s endeavors, I was reminded of a really neat photography trick you might like to try….

If a macro lens is not exactly in your budget at the moment, experiment with this little maneuver:

Turn off your camera. Take off your lens. Flip it around, and VERY CAREFULLY match up the front of your lens with the now bare hole on the front of your camera body.

Be sure it’s not dusty, windy, sandy or dirty. This is risky (but fun)—some, if not all, digital sensors actually draw dust to them like magnets when the lens is off—so do this at your own risk.

Some of you may need to open your aperture before you disassemble. You should be able to control your shutter speed and ISO while you’re operating in pieces. If not, try to set them before taking off your lens; otherwise, find you a really old completely manual, non-computerized SLR from 3 or more decades ago.

Once you’ve got your mount covered pretty well, turn on your camera again. Look through the view finder.

You won’t see anything.

Now slowly and carefully come up real close to something (DON’T smash into it!! You’ll ruin your lens!!!!) You’ve got a macro lens now! Pull yourself and the camera back and forth to achieve focus. Cool, huh? I learned that from some of my photography teachers several years ago.

Look at this image of the check mark. It’s a great illustration of depth of field. This is an example of shallow depth of field. Notice most of the image is blurry, but there’s a strip that goes across the page from roughly left to right (slightly at an angle). I hope you can see it here on the web. When you tell your camera to “focus” on a certain point on your image, you achieve focus that way. But Aperture also contributes to a sense of focus as well. If you want more to be kind of in focus, use a higher aperture/f-stop number, like f7 and up. The hole is smaller and let’s more appear sharper–like when you squint. If you’re not wanting so much to look sharp, open your aperture by setting it at a lower number, like something between f1.2 and f5.6. Anyway, similar stuff is happening when you shoot macro. Your aperture should be all the way open, therefore you’re getting an extremely shallow dof.

Watch out for a kind of lens flare—here I guess I wasn’t flush up against my camera with my lens. I think light was getting in the side, thus creating the redness on the left of the image. That’s my guess anyway. I must have also been shaking too much and probably got too close in the process, hence the blur. But I think it turned out neat anyhow.

And if all that aperture/depth of field stuff is blowing right past you—my apologies. Maybe sometime I’ll post again and back up a little on the concepts.

But hopefully you can at least mess around with your lens in the mean time, and have lots of fun experimenting with macro! If you need some variety in your photography, try this for an afternoon—my bet is you’ll be hooked! You’ll enjoy looking at things from a new perspective—which is what photography is all about, right?

Oh, and hey—any of you ladies wanna find out if the jeweler really left your ring in the cleaner-machine long enough? Whip out your DIY macro lens and put ‘em to the test! ;p

…..or discover that your rings are embarrassingly WAY overdue on a “bath” ….Which is why my other ones will have to wait their turn for their Internet debut! lol In the mean time, ladies and gentlemen, my Irish heritage. Anyone know what the Claddagh means, or the story behind it? Post if you do!

Have fun y’all!

Kayleen