Andrew Molera State Park Part Deux
2012.08.25
Day Seventy Eight. Trotted on back down to Andrew Molera State Park for a quick romp with the still shiny and new macro lens. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in for quite the learning curve. Lesson 1: you can NOT do macro shots hand held. Well, you can, but even the slightest movement causes more than enough focal shift to completely ruin a shot. Luckily I had brought my tripod with me. Lesson 2: wind has the exact same effect as moving while trying to handhold macro shots. Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my weather controlling machine with me, so all I could do was curse at mother nature every time she blew my subject out of the focal plane. Lesson 3: a macro lens can stop down way further than a normal lens. Given my predilection for shooting wide open, I was very surprised to find out that f/45 even existed, but to capture macro detail with any depth what so ever, you have to stop way down. Even at f/8, the focal plane is razor thin. This fact lead right back to lesson 2. With the super small f-stop came significantly increased exposure times. I ended up having to throw away a bunch of shots with shaky subjects thanks to even the slightest of breezes. Lesson 4: f/45 + ISO 50 provides for long enough exposure times to do "long exposures" with moving water when it's cloudy outside. Finally, a good lesson! I was happy to discover this at the shore. Got a couple cool shots of waves breaking on the rocks sans filter. Despite the trip's brevity, I was happy to get out and finally do some real world macro shooting :)
