340: Space-Time Ice Bubbles

I brought a plastic jug full of ice indoors from the garden. (As you do.) It was full of tiny frozen bubbles, in many shapes and sizes. I took various angles, with different lighting (lamp and flash,) and chose this shot because I thought it had simply the most interesting bubbles. The droplets contrast nicely with the streaks, suggesting a sense of movement.

Settings: f/8 (approx,) 1/8, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 25mm extension, fluorescent lamp, black velvet, foil reflector, cable release, tripod. Colour and levels adjustment, square crop.

334: Sugar Cavities

Not the dental sort, but featuring here on something liable to induce such problems if abused.
As expected, I couldn't resist seeing what the bubbles in this orange lollipop looked like close up. I stuck all the extension tubes I had (minus the loose one,) on a 50mm lens and propped the sticky lolly in front of a desk lamp.
The first couple of attempts were plagued by flare, so I cut a small hole in a piece of cardboard and stuck it behind the lolly to cut down on peripheral illumination. This way the only light I really needed was shining through the lolly.
The image looked a great deal more orange out of the camera; while I still liked this, I found that pulling the white balance nearly all the way down made for more varied, acid yellow-greenish tones. While unrealistic, I just find them more pleasing.

Settings: f/9.5, 1/1.7, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 81mm extension, fluorescent lamp, card, tripod. Colour and levels adjustments.

306: Cornystyrene

Settings: f/8, 1/6, ISO 100, 35mm Photax-Paragon M42, 30mm extension, fluorescent lamp, tripod.

266: Tea Bubbles

I attached an enlarger lens to the camera with electrical tape to get this shot! Sharpness slightly better than I thought, but not amazing. The composition and foam could have turned out a bit better, but it's an interesting test nonetheless. It was quite difficult to focus the lens, as it only had an aperture ring and I had to move the camera to focus; plus it was f/4.5 wide open, so not a great VF image.

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Paterson 1:4.5 M39, 8mm M42 extension tube, 1.4 flash, black velvet, foil reflector, tripod.

255: Structural Soap Bubbles

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 58mm extension, 1/4 flash, glass, foil reflector, tripod.
Post-processing: Colour balance, luminance curve, sharpen, crop.

235: Edge of the Goo

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Cosinon M42, 26mm extension, 1/4 flash, white cards, 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.

013: Hyacinth Roots

Another snowy-day image from indoors - this time a manual macro shot.
The hyacinth stems themselves are only just starting to appear, but the roots are nice and long. They resemble noodles from a distance, but close up they posess finely a wrinkled texture rather like that of an elephant's trunk. Between my fingers, they have a very similar texture to beansprouts -but I hesitiate to try eating one for fear of any potential toxicity.
All the detail in the photo looks ever so slightly distorted and soft as it's seen through the glass of the bulb jar, but is still quite sharp. The bubbles are not set in the glass, but ones clinging to the inside of the jar.
Equipment used: K10D, Cosina 50mm f/1.8 (M42), 16mm extension ring, M42-PK converter, Canon Speedlite 300TL.
I placed the jar standing on a black background and the flash firing upward and forward into a white reflector above. I tried a couple of shots at f/5.6 and the flash on 'M Lo' but the focus was difficult to get accurate, so I tried f/16 and 'M Hi' flash power. This gave more detail and a deeper field of focus, but a little less contrast, so I increased the contrast a little bit in postprocessing. and here you have it.