A Velvet summer

For a long time I only had one lens, a beautiful 100 mm Canon macro lens. Now I have a whole collection of Lensbaby lenses and am spoilt for choice. But there is always a favorite! For me that's the one that gives me the most surprises and turns my passion into an obsession. At the moment that is the Velvet 56.

I bought the Velvet 56 a year ago and did not use it very often, mostly because I got frustrated with it and because at that time the Twist 60 was my favorite :). Then I found this picture back on my computer. I was probably focussing on the wet grass when this popped up in front of me and so I captured it. Crane flies are not particularly beautiful creatures, but the glow on its wings turned this one into something magical.

The Velvet 56 has a macro setting (1:2). It's special feature is that with apertures between F 1.6 - F 4.0 the brighter parts in the pictures seem to glow. This put me off in the beginning, but it is a matter of finding the right light to make the most of this. I love anything with drops. And this web was taken probably at F2.8. The spider suddenly moved towards me, pulling parts of the web. Fortunately focus is just right. I love the glow here.

Another effect I love very much is the circular bokeh in front of the focal plane. Behind the focal plane you will see the shape of the aperture (nine blades), but only if you make pictures like this - with clear bokeh and backlight. I am a bokeh addict and almost always work with backlight. I think that his is the way I see things. Wet grass will sparkle in the sunlight, but only in a certain direction. When you get closer the sparkle seems to disappear, but just put your camera in front of it and look. Bokeh everywhere!

Another surprise was the the quality of this picture. I was lucky I found this four spotted chaser. It could not fly (yet) but in hindsight maybe because its wings are abnormal. There are no drops here and still it's beautiful ;)

Last year I bought a set of extension tubes (Kenko, 12, 20 and 36 mm). They can be used separately or stacked and go between the camera and the lens. The effect is that you end up with a (more) macro lens. The minimal focus distance decreases and so does the depth of field. For this grass with drops I added only one ring (probably 20 mm, not sure). The drops closer to the camera are now more out of focus and therefore the rings become bigger. They are well defined due to the bright light. The focus is on the little spider's web in the grass.

I love early mornings after nights with cold clear skies when everything is covered in dewdrops. However, on cloudy days raindrops are also beautiful subjects. These drops were very small so I used all extension tubes. I love the softness (F 4).

My goal for the summer was to make a picture similar to the crane fly, but with damselflies or dragonflies. I am still hunting for what I had in mind. Somehow there seem to be less dragonflies and damselflies than last year, or is it just me? Fortunately I found this dragonlfy hanging in the shade in a dead birch tree. The original is landscape format, so it is cropped quite heavily.

I also found the damselflies, still wet in the early morning light (F 2.8).

And this was probably also F2.8 but the sunlight was coming closer. The settings are not preserved with these manual lenses. I never went beyond F 4.0 and only at F 2.8 and lower the glow becomes increasingly visible.

This is a very simple image but I so like the soft glow on the drops. I still have a lot of pictures in mind for all the spider's webs on this field. Probably F2.8 on a day with cloudy skies.

And the last one is taken at home. I collected the seeds of goat's beard. They are fun to play with and with a spray bottle even more so :). I think all extension tubes were added for this picture.

I also made many pictures of sundew (Drosera intermedia) and will make a separate post about them.

What I have learned so far about the Velvet 56 is that light is everything, as always. Whatever is bright in the picture will glow with the wider apertures. You can adjust the amount of glow by using wider or smaller apertures. At F 5.6 the glow is gone. With extension tubes it is possible to capture tiny details, and still the shutter times are not very slow (and I never go beyond ISO 400). I almost never use a tripod because it cramps my style and I hate using it. To be fair, a lot of my subjects are on the ground so I steady my hands, and sometimes even the lens, on the ground. The damselflies were a challenge because I could not rest my hands anywhere and so I did bring my tripod. But in the end I only used is to steady my hands :)

I still have lots of plans with this lens so I jump (crawl more like) out of bed every morning at 5 o' clock. Unfortunately this morning on my way to the field an alarm light went up in my car. So now it's in the garage (fingers crossed). It was high time I wrote something anyway!