Drops

[mtngal]

Yesterday I had a wonderful day taking pictures with my new camera. I decided that since the wildflowers are out that I would go looking for them. However, as I started to load up my car with camera stuff, the dew on a clump of grass in my yard caught my eye. I grabbed the K20 and the Viv 105 macro and sat down to examine the drops. These were by far the smallest water drops I've tried to photograph, since they were from dew rather than rain.

Here's an uncropped picture of the grass clump. As you can see, this is natural/wild grassand is higher/bigger than groomed lawn grass. I'll have to take a weed-whacker to it soon (our yard is completely natural, and mostly pinon pine trees).



Here's a 100% crop of the above picture. I didn't use a flash with this picture, I was just trying to get a bit of size into the picture. There's some blown-out spots that were caused by the sun so it isn't perfect, but I like it.



The first couple of real macro pictures I took were more abstract - I couldn't stop down the lens enough to get what I wanted without usinga flash or a tripod I don't have (my table top model isn't heavy enough to handle the K20 and the heavy Viv). So I tried with the in-camera flash.This was not at 1:1 because you can't use theViv is too long and will cast shadows when fully extended - the picture ismostly cropped, with alittle resizing. I like this picture, but it really isn't what I wanted - the flash left too many hot spots and washed out the color. I could have chosen a -EV to control the washed out color, but I would still be stuck with the hot spots, so I didn't try it:



Then I got the bright thought to use a flash wirelessly. I used the on-board flash as control only (in that mode it doesn't add anything to the exposure) and put the flash unit on the ground to the side - the first time I had tried this mode with the K20. I got these two pictures, both of which I think are rather fun and what I was looking for. The pictures are cropped significantly with some resizing. I think I tried extended dynamic range (I used it quite a bit yesterday - it does add more noise/grain in the OOF areas, more so than if I had used the same ISO without it).





To be fair about this, for those who might be new here, this isn't the first time I've tried to take small drops of water. Here are pictures I've taken with other cameras at other times (I first tried drops last fall). The main thing I really like about the K20 over the other cameras when it comes to dropsis having all that extra mp for cropping.

K10, same lens, on-board flash, larger drops on a spider web (it made Steve's Photo of the Day last month) it's close to a 100% crop as I recall:



K100, same lens, taken a week or two before the K10's shot last fall. This is a 100% crop, also in-camera flash (this was before I got the flashgun).



These aren't true comparison shots - they've all been post processed and were taken at different times, and while they were taken under similar conditions, they aren't the same scene.

[interested_observer]

These are Wonderful!!!

May I suggest the next stop for these would be a submission to the Pentax Image Gallery.

Number 6 especially - a lens in a lens....

[Peacekeeper]

Amazing images, even the fully cropped ones are beautifully sharp and clear.

PK

[Monza76]

These are truly magnificent images, my wife Annette may be trying this (if the snow ever leaves that is).

Ira

[nhmom]

These are wonderful, Harriet! I love them all.

[Wingman]

Now I'm beginning to see some magnificient images from the K20D! Image nos.3 & 4do it for me--the reflection of the grass on the bead of dew is magical!

Jay

[brokenbokeh]

Wow, really shots, and inspiring, too!

[ennacac]

Harriet, those are just great shots.

Tom

[NonEntity1]

ennacac wrote:

Harriet, those are just great shots.

Tom

I second the motion, they are all very cool, this is something I need to try sometime.

Tim

[Rodney9]

Diamonds, just stunning.