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Sunday, March 27, 2011

Yard Invader!

Today's photo is a closeup that I took yesterday of a dandelion while wandering around the house with my macro zoom lens. I learned through trial and error that the lens that I have (the Tamron 28-300) is not very good at focusing up close for macro shots. The minimum focus distance seems to be about 2 feet, rather than the (spec sheet) 19.3". While that does not make a huge difference for stationary objects (like this) getting extreme close-ups of bugs is going to prove difficult with this lens. So it looks like I will be in the market for a new macro lens in the near future!

Back to the photo, I added some extra bokeh using Bokeh 2 and tweaked the colors quite a bit of the dandelion and seedlings with Nik Color Efex Pro 3 to try to highlight the different subtle nuances of the weed. I also chose to blur the extreme edges of the dandelion to bring more of the focus to the center (and in my opinion the more impressive looking!) portion of the photo.


Yard Invader!



If you are so inclined, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback. Also remember that clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. If you enjoyed this post, please take the time to pass my post(s) on to others whom you also feel would enjoy my work. Thanks for stopping by!

3 comments:

  1. Love this! Never was really interested in Macro before but the more pics I see using the macro lens the more interestd I'm becoming.

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  2. That looks awsome in hdr!
    (I think the 100mm macro is great! -but that is the only 'real' macro lens I have ever had or use)

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  3. The 100mm macro lens is the one that I am considering now that I found the limitations with the Tamron 28-300mm. It is a good lens (all of the Cannery Row Caper pics were taken with that lens if I recall correctly) but it doesn't do the macro portion as well as I would like.

    I think the Canon 100-400mm is going to be the next lens that I consider purchasing, followed by the 100mm macro. But of course that is subject to change!

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