I got a lot of fun camera toys on my Summer 2007 trip to my folks' place in Ohio (tripod, monopod, GPS unit, Katz Eye, high-resolution tablet), but the first thing I played with was a $5 item that allowed me to mount my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 on the camera backwards, thereby yielding an unwieldy but powerful (yet cheap) macro setup.

I later wrote about the basics of reverse-lens macro photography, including the challenges, but when I first got the adapter ring that allowed me to give it a try myself, I didn't have much more than the raw enthusiasm of wanting to try it; I wasn't yet weighted down by the reality of how difficult it can be.

The enthusiasm and some basic instruction came from having seen Mark Dijstelberge's blog and postings on Digital Photography Review. His results are amazing.

The results of my first try were less so.

Mark mostly takes pictures of bugs. I don't like bugs – they give me the creeps – but Mark turns them into works of art. I wanted to try.

As I eventually wrote on the reverse-lens basics post, there are some major challenges: getting enough light on the subject to focus and make an image, controlling the lens aperture, placing the ultra-thin depth of field where you want it, and getting close enough (within an inch!) to the subject to allow a shot without them flying away or stinging you.

I rigged up something to get light from the on-camera flash around the edge of the lens to in front of it, using coat-hanger wire, tape, tin foil, and wax paper. It was comical. It was even more comical to see me try to use it, all the while using one finger on the front of the lens to control the aperture. “Awkward” doesn't even being to describe it.

I went and tried to photograph some bugs, and didn't have very good results. I found the pencil to be an easier subject.

After the summer, when I got back to Kyoto, I posted a few macro shots (a “What am I?” macro quiz, some pesky burrs, and Stupid Macro Tricks), but having run across these photos yesterday in my Lightroom library, I thought I'd share some from my first macro attempt, poor quality and all.

WARNING: BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS          If you don't want to see bugs, stop here.

Hey, I warned you there'd be bugs.

More than a year later, I still don't have a real macro lens. The reverse-lens bit is too much trouble to go through very often, but especially that first time, it was fun trying.

Here's an effective way to ruin almost all your shots for the day, before you even start: neglect to notice a big hunk of grunge on your sensor, thereby causing a big black splotch on most of your photos.

As part of the rigorous testing I do for my readership, I embarked on a thorough test of this technique, while on vacation no less, one of the first days I was at my folks' place in Ohio this summer. It was a wonderful summer day, and a walk around outside had great potential for lots of ruined shots, and I was not disappointed.

Er, I was disappointed. I mean, well, you know what I mean.

Here's the same photo, of Anthony checking out an inchworm on a stick, both in its original form, and after I made an attempt to fix it in Lightroom. By mousing over the “original” and “fixed” buttons underneath, the view switches...

original     fixed

The big black splotch on his cheek is readily apparent, but by toggling back and forth, you'll also find a couple of other grungy spots to the upper-right of his nose that I fixed. They were also caused by dust on my lens. I also “fixed” a spot directly above the big one, closer to his eye, but now that I think about it, I think that may be a freckle.

I didn't notice the spot until the evening when I first checked the images on my laptop. I was not happy. A really simple test photo while sitting in the livingroom with my laptop showed the monster gunk on my sensor...

Ignore the colors – I hadn't used my sensor-dust reference page – but it's impossible to ignore the huge splotch. Whatever is on there is huge, orders of magnitude beyond “dust”. I calculate that it's 0.49mm long. I doubt that a meadow vole crawling into the mirror box would create as big a shadow. It's huge.

And it shows up on every picture.

I normally use this popular wet method for cleaning my camera sensor, but that stuff was at home in Kyoto, so I took a chance with a can of compressed air and blew the sensor clean. (Warning: there are a lot of ways you can ruin your sensor by trying to clean it with a can of compressed air; don't try it until you understand the risks and how to mitigate them.)

I was able to get it remarkably clean in short order, but that didn't help the 100+ photos from earlier in the day.

Here's one of Anthony's cousin Josh reaching for a dandelion. Mouseover the “original” button to see the heinous splotch...

original     fixed

The splotch here looks more well defined than the one on Anthony's cheek, because this was taken at a smaller aperture (f/6.3 vs. f/5), and as I describe on my sensor-dust reference page, dust shows up more apparently with smaller apertures. (That's why the gunk-test shot shown above was taken at the very tiny f/16).

The dandelion picture was easy to fix because the splotch fell on an area of uniformity. It's more apparent (and was more difficult to fix) in the next shot of Josh...

original     fixed

Not all shots are ruined out of hand; if the splotch ends up in a cluttered part of the composition, you might not even notice it. The rest of the photos in this post have not been corrected....

I posed one other goose picture from the summer, that was better than this.

I like the cattails around the lake, and have posted about them in the past.

The big black splotch isn't very apparent in this last image both due to its location, and to its aperture (f/2.8), but the smoothness of the big leaf allows a different splotch to show up clearly. You might not have noticed it, but it's something that almost any serious digital photographer would see (and cringe at) right away. Ugh.

A good pro photographer (e.g. wedding, sports, event, etc...) has a list of things to prepare/check before heading out on a shoot, such as “format memory cards”, “ensure batteries are charged”, and “reset all camera settings”. I'm not a pro and I have no such list, but I've seen them. I've never seen “check for sensor dust” on one, but I think it should be there.

(Unless you're shooting film, of course :-)).

Adobe has posted a release candidate of Lightroom 2.1 for those Lightroom 2.0 owners who wish to try it. The update has no new functionality (except support for some new cameras), but does include a host of bug fixes and speedup improvements (all listed on the page I linked to). If you're being bit by one of the bugs, you'll probably want to upgrade.

The “release candidate” status means that Adobe believes it's ready for use, but it's not an update that's pushed to everyone automatically; you have to download it manually. After the Lightroom 1.4 booboos, Adobe is stepping more prudently with this release.

Eventually, Adobe will release 2.1 as a normal, full release. When it does, it may well turn out to be exactly the same as the release candidate. Or, further refinements may be made between now and then. We'll see.

A shot from my recent Impossible Photography outing, where I used a very fast lens (Nikkor 50mm f/1.2) and the Nikon D700's low-light performance for some night photography in Kyoto.

This was the entrance foyer of a restaurant that had plenty of light.... I only needed ISO 1100 at f/1.2 and 1/100sec for the wider shot....

It reminds me a bit of the front desk at the Four Seasons Resort, Whistler, although this was perhaps more out of place.

The low-light performance still doesn't help with the problem of dynamic range.... of being able to capture/display the detail in dark shadows at the same time as capturing/displaying detail in relatively brighter areas. Our eyes are much better at this, but I'm sure some day technology will catch up. (After all, it's just counting photons.)

Here's a perfect example of the dynamic-range problem, with even dim lanterns “blowing out” the sensor, which was using an exposure aimed at capturing detail in the darker portions of the frame.....

Unlike the first two pictures in this post, or the others in the original post, this last one has had some post-processing. In Lightroom, I “painted” negative exposure on the big lighted sign in the center, to bring out some of the letting, which had been totally blown-out white. It reveals that the name of the place is kashintei (花心亭), for whatever that's worth.

Because of the strange things that happen to digitally-encoded colors near the limits of brightness, I also painted on a lot of desaturation, so that the sign wouldn't turn wonky, unrealistic colors as I toned down its brightness. Perhaps the sheer whiteness I ended up with looks odd in this decidedly warm scene, so I should have painted on a bit of the yellow-orange that is pervasive everywhere else. Lightroom allows for that, but I haven't figured out a way to sample a color from the image when selecting a color to tinge with, so at this point it's more trouble than it's worth. (I've been running a fever on and off today, so I have a low threshold for trouble.)

The main reason for our summer trip to Vancouver was to meet Joan, Fumie's host mother on Fumie's first trip outside Japan, about 12 years ago. Fumie spent a month in Vancouver, studying English, in 1996, and hadn't seen her since just before we were married, in 1998. Anthony and I had never met her.

Joan has lived in Vancouver for 91 years, so knows her way around. She picked us up at our downtown hotel, and amid an occasional light rain, drove us up to Queen Elizabeth Park and treated us to a wonderful meal at its restaurant, Seasons in the Park.

Anthony liked the fountains...

He was less interested in the wonderful flowers everywhere...

... or in the view...

The restaurant shared the nice view, but at least for Anthony, it also had food...

If Joan had been like most host mothers, in her 30s or 40s or 50s, there would be no need to mention that she was a completely lucid, strong, independent, self-thinking, self-doing, fully-functional member of society, but since she's 91 years old, I will go out of my way to mention that the word “frail” has no place in any conversation about her. Not about her physical stamina, her coordination, her hearing, her intellect, her speech, nor her wit.

She's like 40 years old, except with the wit and wisdom of someone who has been around 51 extra years.

I'm 42, and I aspire to be like her when I'm 43. We had a wonderful time chatting with her for hours. She's got kids, grandkids, and great grandkids. She's got the years under her belt for an endless repertoire of stories, but the lucidity and wisdom to pick only the best or most pertinent. One of her kids was running a computer-related business in the mid 1960s (when I was born), and it was fascinating to hear about (at least for me; perhaps less so for Fumie and Anthony :-)).

After the meal, we headed back to her place. Trying to be a gentleman, I asked whether she'd like me to drive, to which she replied “Well, I'm fine, but if my driving scares you, go ahead and be my guest.”   She drove.

To the chagrin of five-year-old Anthony, we chatted endlessly at her place. Fumie had a few little gifts from Japan for her, and it was time to go....

We walked to a nearby bus stop, retracing the steps Fumie took every weekday 12 years ago, and took a bus back to downtown, just as Fumie took a bus on her way to her English school.

It was a highly nostalgic day for Fumie, and a truly wonderful day for me.

We'll definitely be back to visit her again... perhaps in a few years when she turns 100. (If I'm not fully senile yet.)