I’ve just been tuned into the American Arachnology Society meeting all day, and boy is my brain tired. It’s a good tired, though.
Then Mary gave me a belated Father’s Day gift: a Laowa 60mm f/2.8 ultra-macro lens. She shouldn’t have. I’ve only had a few minutes free to play with it, but it’s sweet: amazingly clear and sharp, but definitely not your casual macro lens, since it has no autofocus, no electronic aperture control, no image stabilization, just a hunk of very nice glass.
Now I have a little time to go on a walk and try it out. It’s a hot day, the spiders have been gamboling in my office, there’s a good chance I’ll find my octo-friends outside. Also, AAS is running a bioblitz, so I’ll have to get some specimens for that.
Oh, and DEREK CHAUVIN WAS SENTENCED TO 22.5 YEARS IN PRISON. That’s a relief, now I don’t have to riot and set Morris on fire tonight.
Time to do some chores, ans relaaa…
Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Evolution is fake”
FUUUUCK! It never ends!
Woot.
Nice gift for Father’s Day.
I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but many high-end macro lenses come without auto-focus, and in fact the biggest commercial factor pushing lens makers to add autofocus is for photographers who want to use their macro lens for non-macro work as well (some macro lenses can double as fantastic portrait lenses).
The idea is you stick the camera on a focussing rail, use the lens’s focus to get the first approximation, then use the fine adjustment knob on the rail to move the lens back and forth to deal with the razor-thin depth of field. Of course this works better for inanimate subjects. As soon as you deal with living subjects, autofocus can be helpful (although experienced macro photographers seem to develop an almost magical ability to get the focus perfect on a rail even with moving subjects).
Either way, pair it with a flash if you can.
Sorry to shit diarrhea on your parade like some kind of fecal hurricane, but Chauvin is going to be available for parole a lot sooner. 8 years sooner. I do not doubt he will be paroled after 15 years and released. The “system” is working just like it was designed for. He’s going to be released years earlier, because he’s a white cop.
Nice lens, and a good choice. Common wisdom is that macros in the field should be done “all manual” and with the image stabilisation turned off, anyway. It’s a bit hard to start with, but you’ll never look back. And of course, stacking, whenever you can, is always a good idea.