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.

217: Walnuts on White

Settings: f/4, 1/180, ISO 100, 50mm Pentacon M42, 9mm extension, 1/4 flash, white cards, tripod.

043: Nuts & Syrup

Caution: This image contains nuts; also plenty of sweet syrup and chocolate.
I tried a different lens today - an old Tamron SP 28-80 macro-zoom with adaptall mount. Using an M42 adaptall, I added 52mm of extension tubes (inc. PK adapter ring,) and the result is quite a versatile macro lens.
However, it's not without its drawbacks. First, the rubber hood is quite wide and shallow, making it harder to avoid flare. What's more, the lens has no "manual" stop-down selector; this is a bugger because if I wanted to shoot at any f/no. more than mide open I would have to tweak the mount somehow. I might try some other time, but today I just used it as it was and hoped the flash wasn't too fierce. The aperture range wide open is 3.5-4.2, so it's not so fast that I get a completely unstable result.
The in-focus areas are pretty sharp, actually. The light was quite blown out at the left side, but I managed to rescue it with some judicious slider-tweaking on the exposure control and shadows/highlights functions in Raw Therapee. It might have come out better if I had used the white card more carefully underneath, but I didn't want to get it too close that the image might get more cloudy - the lens is wide open, after all.

017: Almonds on Yellow

Three almonds on some yellow paper. Curiously similar to yesterday's photo in that everything in frame is the product of a tree. (Omitting colourings.)
We're operating in quite a higher key than the cat photo, but with a similarly minimal composition. Also the same Cosinon M42 lens was used - it's becoming quite a favourite of mine for its sharpness and clarity.
This was shot a f/5.6, 1/180 sec. with low flash setting and a white reflector overhead. I originally just poured a heap of almonds in front of the camera and took a crowd shot, but decided that was boring. So I went back and made this simpler arrangement, which I prefer much more. I could have spent longer adjusting the almonds' composition, but I've been in a hurry to get this post up before midnight. I think it looks good as it is.
And yes, yellow backgrounds are good behind brown.