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Ed Knepley | all galleries >> Photo a Day (PAD) since 5/04 >> nov_09_pad > 11/28/09 - Larger than Life
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27-NOV-2009

11/28/09 - Larger than Life

Stamen of a yellow day lily (Thanksgiving dinner floral arrangement - Thanks, KnepBunch). From the camera with NO cropping to make things appear larger. This is larger than life size - the D300's sensor is approximately 1 inch long on the long side and this stamen is about 0.6 inches long. If the stamen were vertical we see that it would nearly fill the sensor - it's about 1.5 times life size. 1:1 macro lens with a teleconverter added to it. The stamen's yellow stem is just barely visible against the background of the yellow lily petal.
The hardest thing about making this image was finding a relatively isolated stamen and the working with minute tripod/camera positioning adjustments to keep extraneous elements from intruding - all the while trying to keep the sensor plane parallel to the stamen to ensure sharp focus throughout and maintaining the absolute minimum focus distance in order to achieve the maximum "magnification". This is where years of practice to perfect technique pay off. It's also one of those rare cases where having the right equipment plays a big role, too. The final focusing is done by moving the camera (whose focus distance has been set to the absolute minimum - manual focus of course) - the camera is sitting on a focusing "rail" which allows it to be moved fractions of a mm (like 1/100). You get things set up "just about right" and then make the final focus adjustment by moving the camera fractions of a millimeter to & fro (and left/right if you have two rails). Picky, picky details just to show the viewer something that their eye can't deal with naturally.

Nikon D300
5s f/20.0 at 105.0mm iso200 full exif

other sizes: small medium original auto
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waterfalls man28-Nov-2009 16:39
Beautiful Shot & Detail V !!