363: Old Metal Parts

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 49mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) white card, tripod. Tone curve adjustment, sharpen, slight rotate and crop.

352: Sponge Foam Structure

Settings: f/11, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 88mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) cable release, tripod. Colour and tone curve adjustments, 100% centre crop.

350: Misted Floret

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 51mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) tripod.

349: Rainbow Sprout

Settings: f/11, 1/180, ISO 100, 51mm extension, 1/4 flash, white card, tripod. Colour and tone curve adjustments, slight 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.

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.

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.

333: Coconut Moon

333 Seems like an auspicious number; not sure why, apart from the repetition.
The coconut simply looked interesting close up, and as with things I find interesting, I often consider the possibility of a photographic record.
Plus it looks rather like the moon.

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 51mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) white card, tripod.

332: The Speed Selector

Settings: f/5.6, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 51mm extension, 1/4 flash, metal bowl, black velvet, tripod.

329: Juice, Pith & Skin

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 68mm extension, 1/4 flash (bounced,) tripod.

328: Pepper Juice Purses

Not seaweed, but capsicum. The firm pockets of juice on the inner walls of this yellow pepper are very shiny, and are highlighted very effectively by lighting sideways on.

Settings: f/8, 1/4, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 68mm extension, 1/4 flash, tripod. Colour and levels adjustment, slight sharpen and crop.

325: Broccolilies

Flowers are not just for unusual salads - One bite of broccoli (calabrese) contains hundreds of these delicate, tiny green buds.

The anthers on these broccoli flowers look slightly like those of lilies - a big generalisation, but it led conveniently onto the title.

Settings: f/8, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 51mm extension, 1.4 flash, black velvet, tripod.

319: Twig Corals

Discovered in local woodland on Sunday, this rotten twig sports many tiny, coral-like fungal growths. I knew I wasn't going to get a decently lit and well-considered shot out in the cold woods, so it had to come home; and here we have it.
The twig was about 25mm(1 inch) wide, and measures about 2200px on the full 3888px wide image. This makes it about 13mm wide on the sensor, so the magnification ratio is around 1:2.

Settings: f/9, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 29mm extension, 1/4 flash, white cards, foil, black velvet, tripod. Slight levels adjustment and very light sharpening.

317: Scratch & Shine

A detail from a metal spoon directly under a halogen light, shot very close up. Quite a soft image, but with a ton of tubes and a wide-open lens, it's almost a certainty; also hand-holding the camera doesn't help much.

Settings: f/1.8, 1/8, ISO 200, 50mm Cosinon M42, 83mm extension. Colour adjustment and crop.

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.

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.

307: Watery Lens

Noticed on my spectacles after coming in from walking in the drizzle; this light distribution of droplets form a pleasing contrast when the lens they lie on forms two distinct bright and dark tones underneath.

Settings: f/5.6, 1/10, ISO 800, 35mm Photax-Paragon M42, 30mm extension. Hand-held in front of a CRT monitor. Square crop,monochrome conversion, sharpening, levels adjustment.

306: Cornystyrene

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