Raiding Drawers! | Canon 100mm f2.8 Macro

[iGiDK]

Decided to buy a shiny new Canon EF 100mm f2.8 Macro USM the other day. I am very impressed with its build quality and handling.

I tried it out for the first time tonight by blitzing through as much random household items as I could in my daily half hour window of peace when our maniac dog is out for his walk.

All were taken using my no-frills lightbox, the flash wasn't used in each of these shots below as I was finding the on-board flash too harsh at times, instead I reverted to the tripod and longer exposures. (Really want a speedlite now )

Any comments / criticism welcome.

Let's start off with the intial crappy ones:

[iGiDK]

Getting a little more confident now with the lighting, aperture and manual focus:

[iGiDK]

And finally here's a few attempts that were meant to be a little more abstract:

All in all I'm rather pleased with the amount of keepers given the half hour timeframe, if anyone is thinking about getting this lens I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it based on my initial playtime.

Can't wait for the next macro shoot!

[alj23]

wow those are fantastic - the colour is amazing

[salubrious_k]

Great shots. I particularly like the 2nd and 3rd and then the two of the forks.

What lighting did you use? Do you have a flash? (I don't ) I really want to try this myself as soon as I get the time as I recently got the same lens but have only used it for a flower shooting spree so far.

I'll definitely add my recommendations to yours - it really is a superb lens!

[iGiDK]

Thanks guys,

salubrious, I've got a really cheap soft lightbox which you can pick up from maplins for a bargain £9.99 (I paid £20 for mine) - there was a thread on here a while ago from Yandros which inspired me to get this rig set up.

I just use a couple of desklamps on each side of the box for lighting, don't use a flash as the onboard Canon flash is far too harsh for my liking.

Might try and get a Speedlite 580EX if it comes down in price by a few ££ once the 580EX mkII is released

The lightbox:
http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...38260&doy=18m1

[salubrious_k]

Thanks! That looks great. Hmmm... there's a Maplin in Camden Town where I work... tempting!

[iGiDK]

I couldn't recommend it highly enough to be honest, for such a low price and with a little improvisation with the backgrounds you can have a lot of fun.

A couple of examples:

[salubrious_k]

How do the latter two examples work? Obviously their background colours seem different to the white light I would expect to see

[iGiDK]

#1 Just using a white cardboard 12" record mailer as the background - the PP has given it a slightly cooler tone. Both desklamps used.

#2 Black cardboard for background, subjects placed on an A4 sized mirror for the reflection in the foreground. The 2 desklamps were used. If I remember correctly the shot was deliberately slightly underexposed to make the black background 'blacker' and then did a little tweaking in photoshop with an S shaped curve to darken it even more.

#3 Tilted the lightbox so that the white nylon panels were all orientated vertically and placed a tealight candle outside the box resulting in the warm coloured background and the silhouette in the foreground, again, this one was underexposed slightly to darken the subject and promote the warmth of the background colours. No desklamps used this time.

[BananaTiger]

Wow, that lightbox from Maplins seems a bargain! Probably check out Maplins this lunchtime too

[Yandros]

Superb results! I can see I'm going to have to play some more with it to try to keep up with you

Here's my original thread showing, including the shopping list of kit.

ultra cheap macro studio

Dirt cheap, even including the lights.

[bowenjones]

I think I've found my next lens
Cracking shots iGiDK

[iGiDK]

A few more from this evening:

I love this lens!

[vulkan75]

When I saw the title to this thread I couldnt wait to see what it was about."Raiding drawers"

The peppers and glass shot are excellent