Focusing a reversed 50mm by rocking back and forth is especially tough when your subject darts around like a mosquito.
Don’t look too closely at this one… The [whateverthisis] portion of this picture was tortured beyond all reasonable requirements to make it appear, at first glance, to be in focus. Trust me, it’s not, and if you look closely, you can see all the post work I subjected it to.
If you’ve been following the 365, you know this is out of character for me, so I apologize.
Anyway.
I walked out to the landscaping out front of the building that shares a parking lot with mine, and started bug hunting. A large gentleman (I’m 6’2″ and about 250lbs, and this guy had 6″ and 80lbs on me) came out with his dog. I looked up and said “How’s it going?”
“How you doing?” he asked. “What are you up to?” he added, suspiciously.
I looked up from my bug hunting, and saw he was giving me the “what are you doing around her, you don’t belong here” look that I’ve come to expect from people, but very rarely actually receive, and a range of responses ran through my head.
I discarded “none of your &%*@#&! business” and “just wandering around my neighborhood” out of hand, and instead regaled him with a 20 minute, very one-sided discussion of the marvels of shooting with reversed prime lenses, and the pros and cons of reversed primes over reversed zooms, and why don’t I just buy a proper macro lens, etc. Every time he tried to turn away, or call his dog, or escape, I moved closer and became more animated.
His look went from suspicion to “jeez, why did I ask?” rather quickly.
Despite prevailing in the first suspicious confrontation I’ve had on a solo photowalk, I still brought myself back home as soon as was feasible (about 10 minutes after the gentleman and his dog went back inside).
A different person would’ve tried to make friends with this guy, or put him at ease, or tell him where to go. But not me, I consciously chose to make him regret even looking at me.
I think he deserved this for his suspicious mind, and hope he thinks twice before bothering a stranger with a camera again.
D7000. Vivitar 50mm f/1.8 (Cosina), reversed. ISO100, 1/125th (AP mode), f/8, -1EV. About 17 minutes of post processing to make the bug look in focus and blur out the leaf, which was actually pretty sharp. (If you’re curious, I think this lens is at its sharpest between f/5.6 and f/8, with f/4 being eminently reasonable as well. 1.8 is rather soft, with some improvement at 2 and 2.8. I’ve not shot beyond f/8 yet.)
