150: Elder Buds

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, Photax-Paragon 35mm M42, 10mm extension, 1/4 flash, white card and reflector, tripod.

149: Insect Nation

Giant aphids have apparently taken over Cardboard Town.
I say good for them.

Settings: f/16, 1/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 60mm extension, 1/4 flash, yellow paper, tripod.

148: Chive Flower

Lit from underneath.
Settings: f/2.8, 1/4, ISO 100, 1/4 flash, white & black cards, tripod.

147: Fingers and Frets

Settings: f/1.4, 1/50, ISO 400, P-FA 50mm.

146: Green Sapsuckers

Mid-May onwards has seen the emergence of the dreaded aphids. They're always congregating on young apple and blackcurrant leaves, but also the buds on this Scarlet Trumpet Honeysuckle. They can encrust stinging nettles in near totality later on.
I dislike these tiny vampires, but at least they provide an abundant and interesting subject. What's more, they pack themselves densely and hardly move, which certainly helps with composing a very close macro shot like this one.

Settings: f/11, 1/180, ISO 100, P-FA 50mm 1:1.4, 70mm bellows, 1/4 flash, white card & foil reflector, tripod.

145: Golden Glass Spiral

Looking closer, I can see that there are more bubbles than I expected in this marble. I focussed on the large bubble, but it's difficult not to hit plenty of the tiny ones at other focus distances.
I like this photo, but I don't like seeing the highlight of the reflector on the top right, and I would have preferred to have less shadow on the left. Yet more convincing reasons to get a flash cable setup soon.

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, Helios-44 58mm 1:2 M42, 42mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil reflector, tripod. Luminance adjustments and cropping.

144: Chamomile Flowers

Grainy but sharp - better this way than otherwise.
When I left home on Friday, only a few emerging petals could be seen. Now the plants are in full bloom; some of these flowers need picking to dry for tea now.

Settings: f/8, 1/500, ISO 400, P-FA 50mm 1:1.4, cropped.

143: Blue and Yellow Flowers

Nothing special here, I just like the gentle, bright colours and detail of the small flowers.

Settings: f/5.6, 1/50, ISO 100, Photax-Paragon 35mm f/3.5 M42. Some cropping.

142: Chapter House at Three

Lincoln Cathedral, straight from camera JPEG, no cropping, and a degree of predicatble (18mm) vignetting that seems to tie up the contours of the upper image quite well.

Settings: f/8, 1/125, ISO 100, P-DA 18-55 (18mm)

141: A Strange Flat Bug

...On a lemon balm leaf.
I have no idea what it is, all I know is that it's a living thing with tiny legs underneath a flat, lumpy, shield-like carapace.
It's definitely one of the creepier bugs I've found in the garden this year.

Settings: f/16, 1/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, BPM Bellows near full extension, 1/4 flash, white cards & foil reflector, tripod.

140: Pouring A Green Tea

A cup of tea, while common, is unique in being so many things to different people.
Some like it any combination of green, brown, white, strong, weak, sweet, dry, milky, lemony, minty, icy, smoky, fruity, tangy, etc... The list goes on.

To me it is simply something that can be both refreshing and comforting, and also energising and relaxing.
To this photo it's apparently frozen!

After using this Pentacon M42 lens for a few shots, here I can say that it is very sharp indeed. The colour seems to be very true as well.

Settings: f/4.8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon f/1.8 M42, 1/4 flash, foil reflectors, black velvet, tripod, remote release.

139: Chitting Revisited

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon f/1.8 M42, 16mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil & white reflectors, black velvet background. Slight Background cleanup.

138: Coloured Pencils

Settings: f/9.5, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon f/1.8 M42, 26mm extension, 1/4 flash, white & foil reflectors.

137: A Reddish Radish

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon f/1.8 M42, 16mm extension, 1/4 flash, white & foil reflectors. PP background cleanup.

136: Turnip Leaves

Settings: f/6.3, 1/60, ISO 200, P-FA 50mm.

135: Skull Profile Cloud

Settings: f/22, 1/200, ISO 100, EOS D30 & Tamron SP 28-105mm f/4-4.5, luminance curve adjustment.

134: Brass Chambers

Settings: f/1.8, 1 sec. ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 26mm extension, tungsten light, tripod.

133: Squash Leaf Droplets

The tiny hairs on this squash leaf hold the water very securely; it sticks fast to the surface. I expect most of this water will have evaporated before it has had the beginnings of a chance of slipping down.
The camera JPEG was already very good, but when compared to the RAW it lacked a little brightness and colour, so I put it through RT as usual, making next to no adjustments.

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, Cosinon 50mm f/1.8, 26mm extension, 1/4 flash, white reflector, tripod.

132: The Ticking Clock

As dandelions tend to broadcast their seed prolifically if you leave them to their own devices, I don't like to have many of them out in the garden; even though they look nice. I brought a couple in to photograph.
This one was just like this, but I noticed that having a gap added some extra interest and also gave a slightly clearer view to the centre.

Settings: f/4.8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 26mm extension, 1/4 flash, white reflector, tripod.

131: Ghostly Hand Trails

A simple experiment with long exposure time and manually triggered flash strobe. I appear to have plasma trailing from my fingertips, but I don't mind. It's a perfectly natural four-dimensional phenomenon.

Settings: f/11, 2 sec, ISO 100, DA 18-55, 1/4 flash, 50W halogen light, black velvet, tripod.

130: Flying Shreddings

The best of 96 attempts at chucking a bundle of newspaper shreddings! I could have just laid some paper down in a pattern, but that wouldn't have had the 3D look with depth-of-field blur I was trying to attain.

It didn't help that the 50mm lens I used has a somewhat restrictive field of view for this kind of subject, also I had other misses due to triggering the shutter out of time with the flying mass of paper strands.
I will use a wider lens next time.

And I am not advertising a certain consumer electronics corporation here; it simply happened to turn up in this shot.

Settings: f/7.1, 1/180, ISO 100, P-FA 50mm, 1/4 flash, black velvet, tripod. Luminance Curve adjustment, cropping, black background cleaned up.

129: Bendy Caterpillar

An unidentified moth caterpillar, found on a sorrel leaf. It was moving around a lot and difficult to keep in front of the lens, but I managed to get this quick shot. This is a 100% crop.
The JPEG from camera was very poor, but the RAW contained mach more detail.

Settings: f/4, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 49mm extension, 1/4 flash, white & foil reflectors.

128: Red Hairberries

Today I've also been taking some test shots with an old Tamron SP lens on my D30; with an M42 adaptall and M42-EF adapter.
I'm delighted to see that the exposure was spot-on in nearly all the shots I took - a better show than my K10D, which is a good six years newer. I know that the oft-cited PentaxUnderexposure(TM) can be better for preserving highlight details, but I don't always want to post-process everything I shoot. I am getting to prefer the Canon's more consistent exposure, even if it blows the highlights sometimes. It's just more reliable!
I would just shoot RAW if I wanted to rework problematic exposures, although I'm not so sure that the D30 has as good dynamic range in the highlights. I would use the K10D instead, as I normally do.

I used aperture-priority mode instead of manual now, because:
1. Using an old lens with M mode requires me to first focus, stop down the lens, then select the shutter speed with the control dial until it the registers roughly in the middle of the EV meter. But stopping down a lens makes the viewfinder display go dimmer; in bright daylight this contrast can make the EV meter fade into total obscurity.
2. After testing the camera with a borrowed autofocus lens, it was left on AV mode. I didn't realise until I later took a perfectly-exposed shot with an M42 lens, then noticed the mode. I didn't think of using it like this (at least not with this camera,) but AV is definitely easier now.

Settings: f/3.5, 1/25, ISO 400, Tamron SP 28-80, EOS D30.

127: Cup of Tea?

In this case, an after-dinner treat of Green tea with spearmint, lemon balm, sweet woodruff & southernwood. Now, if that isn't poncey, I don't know what is. I made it, so call me a ponce. Tasted interesting, though.
May is definitely the month when it all kicks off in the garden. I can step out and pick a great bunch of varied things to put into my tea.

Non-green tea fans will be relieved to know that I had a "proper" cup of tea at teatime...
And yes, this photo is a day late. Slap my wrist. I just couldn't think of anything to do yesterday.

Settings: f/2.8, 1/15, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 10mm extension. Some very slight adjustments in RT.

126: Hanging Beads

It took ages to thread all these beads! It's quite relaxing though, especially when sitting in front of the TV with something on that doesn't need watching all the time (namely election night.)

Perhaps I am thinking hung parliament while hanging these beads..?
There are certainly enough colours to represent the various political parties here.

Settings: f/11, 1/3, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 26mm extension, 1/4 flash, white cards & foil reflector.

125: A Line of Clementines

This one was quite heavily post-processed, but it just wasn't very interesting au naturel.
I don't usually like to mess with my images; I prefer to take naturalistic shots that look good as they are, but sometimes there's no substitute for tweaking if you want a certain look.
I do happen to like this photo quite a lot now. The adjustments definitely add a new dimension to the image rather than cover up any inadequacies. The source RAW was the best of the series, and properly exposed (so I started off with a solid image.)

Of course post-processing should not be used as an excuse to take just any old crappy photo. That's like the photographic equivalent of auto-tuning a bad singer!
Rubbish in, rubbish out...

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 10mm extension, 1/4 flash, white boards & foil reflector. Colour and luminance curve adjustments.

124: Blank Film

This particular roll of film was supposed to develop properly, but alas came to nothing. Only now I've realised that the developer was no good; I should have been more suspicious when I noticed flecks of something floating in it! I also got a bad feeling when the fixer looked a bit too colourful when draining from the drum. There's not a speck of black on the film, proof that the developer was totally stale.
I reckon I lost quite a few decent shots there, but I can't dwell on the loss. It seems to me that's part of the philosophy of film. If it screws up, just let it go and move on.

Some one-shot developer is really what I need now!

Settings: f/11, 1/2.5, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 25mm extension, 1/4 flash, white board and foil reflector.

123: Yellow Under Blue

Everybody needs to shoot a by-the-numbers landscape to understand how they can improve their technique. I certainly need to do more of them as a matter of practice. Although I could really do with a better wideangle lens too; that DA 12-24 looks awfully good, but not for the horrendous price Pentax is asking for it now. In fact, rule out any of their lenses, they just seem like a rip-off nowadays. Some have almost doubled in price over the last couple of years. I really wish I had bought some more before so I could flog them at a profit now! Of all the lame reasons to want to go back in time for..!

No excessive tweaking, mind you. If there's one thing I can do with less of, it's those artfully-bodged-looking scenes with too much contrast and colour saturation.

I think I captured those clouds at a nice moment.

Settings: f/16, 1/80, ISO 100, P-DA 18-55 (18mm.)

122: Cakes!

Settings: f/1.8, 1/25, ISO 400.

121: A Sun Follower's Arrival

Settings: f/10, 1/100, ISO 100, P-FA 50mm.

120: Apple Blossom & Fly

Settings: f/5.6, 1/200, ISO 400, 50mm Cosinon M42, EOS D30.