364: Blossoming Lemon

Settings: f/11 (approx,) 1/8, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 33mm extension, fluorescent lamp, black velvet, cable release, tripod. Slight tone curve / colour adjustments and crop.

347: Purple Peel

Close up, banana peel shows some tiny starchy clumps, but without a bit of adjustment it can look very flat and boring. Blue-Purple-Pink really seems to bring out its textures better.

Settings: f/16, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 76mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) foil reflector, tripod. Colour and tone curve adjustments, crop to square.

346: Sticky Cupcake

Settings: f/8 (approx,) 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 19mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) cardboard, tripod. Tone curve adjustments, crop to 16:9.

341: Offshoot Curves

Very late update...
Another of a Jerusalem artichoke - but this is one of the new crop. This one was stored for a couple of days, and its skin now looks slightly shrivelled, while the tips of its branched-off new roots are starting to droop.
The added red tint was a post-processing afterthought, one that I simply considered fitting.

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 45mm extension, 1/4 flash, black velvet, cable release, tripod. Colour and levels adjustments, slight crop.

339: Ring Spine

Settings: f/10 (approx,) 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 9mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) black velvet, cable release, tripod. Slight curves and colour adjustment, crop to 16:9.

338: Oven-Fresh Biscuits

Settings: f/4, 1/5, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 9mm extension, tungsten light, cable release, tripod. Slight curves adjustment and colour correction.

327: Pillars of Frost

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 21mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced.)

326: Berries, Frost & Leaves

Settings: f/11, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 21mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced.)

316: Between the Pixels

Guess the game: PC (DOS), Psygnosis, 1994. I must have been half my current age when I last played this...
It's run in DosBox here, and scaled up to a much higher resolution, so the pixels use up a lot more scanlines on the CRT monitor.
All I did here was bung some tubes on a 50mm M42 lens and squash it against the screen - it's shot at an angle here, so cue the inevitable focus field blur.

Settings: f/2, 1/6, ISO 400, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 51mm extension.

315: Dustfingers

My fingers were covered in paint dust, and I noticed how the fine detail was so well defined by its covering - almost like an over-sharpened photo. A very sharp lens (a Helios-44M) was great to use here; it shows the fine details very clearly. To get most of the fingers in focus it was set to f/11 (which is roughly near to the supposed
diffraction limit of the Pentax K10D's Sony 10Mp CCD.)

Two versions of one image here: I couldn't decide which way round I prefer it. The landscape version is the original.

Settings: f/11, 1/180, ISO 200, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 18mm extension, 1/4 flash, fluorescent lamp, black velvet, tripod.

311: Feather Ribs

Settings: f/8, 1/4, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 62mm extension, flash, tripod. Sharpening, levels adjustment, crop.

308: Emotikeys

Taken as an entry for the BBC 6music MPFree EP cover competition. The subject was Punctuation Marks, on account of the band !!! playing in session today.

Settings: f/5.6, 1/8, ISO 200, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 61mm extension, fluorescent lamp, tripod.

UPDATE: Damn you, 6music. It didn't win - never mind. What were the chances, eh? At least I took part, and I enjoyed the results here. It's quite a sweet picture, really. (despite the old ground-in grime, although it adds a measure of authenticity.)

Speaking of !!!...
This video is quite saucy, in an entertainingly implicit way. And the music's good too, which helps. Never make a video for music you don't like, unless you're being paid a truckload.

305: Corner-Worn

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 77mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil & white reflectors, tripod.

304: Interference Weave

Shot of the side of a plastic film developing spool; backlit and turned so both sides of concentric rings create interference patterns by crossing each other.
Looks a bit like a basket, too.

Settings: f/4, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 77mm extension, 1/4 flash(bounced off steel bowl behind subject,) tripod.

303: Leaf Crinkles

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 25mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil reflector, tripod.

300: Tomato-Twig Arrangement

The 300th image so far; Only 65 more until the year is up...

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 9mm extension, 1/4 flash, white card, black velvet, tripod.

298: Radial Plastics

A detail of a cheap plastic fan. Weirdly, the only reason I took this photo was that I brought this fan out of storage to discharge some NiMH batteries for better recharging. (my flash only seems to use half their power before it refuses to work any more.)

Settings: f/8, 1/6, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44M M42, 36mm extension, fluorescent desk lamp, black cloth.

271: Jellies

Settings: f/8 (approx), 1/180, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 43mm extension, 1/4 flash, foil reflector, tripod.

268: Skin, Scored

Settings: f/16, 1/4, ISO 100, 58mm Helios-44-2 M42, 19mm extension, 1/4 flash, black velvet, tripod. Cropped square.

265: Night Street Discs

Nice images can be taken with a fast lens wide open and focused to the minimum distance.
The old EOS D30 definitely has some dynamic range issues: Highlights blow quite easily, even in RAW. I had to convert the CRW files to DNG using the Adobe DNG converter, otherwise RT wouldn't read the colour settings correctly (totally skewing the white balance, and giving a purplish tint to blown highlights which is near impossible to recover in post-processing.)

Settings: f/2, 1/20, ISO 400, EOS D30, 58mm Helios-44M M42. DNG RAW.