Today's post will show 1:2 close-up photos of flowers taken at 48 inches from in-front of the lens, using the Nikon 17E II teleconverter with my camera and lens.
I photographed the flowers using a Nikon D500 camera and a Nikkor 300mm f4E PF lens with a Nikon 17E II teleconverter between the camera and lens. The camera ISO was set at 100, and the lens to f/6.7 (approx. effective f/11 due to TC). The camera was mounted on a tripod. I used a Nikon MC-36 Cable release to fire the shutter. I used live view and manually focused by rotating the lens Focus Ring.
The flowers were placed 48 inches from in-front of the lens and illuminated with an Ott Lamp.
Here is a photo of my Nikon D500 target (described in the April 25 post in this forum) which shows that the use of a 17E II teleconverter gives a 1:2 close-up photo with the front of the lens 48 inches from the target:
Here is a 1:2 photo of a Red Gerbera Daisy 48 inches from in-front of the lens:
The central dark disk (which is not in focus, therefore, it is black in the photo) is the "disk florets". The ring of banana-like structures around the disk florets are the "trans florets". And the ring of white tiny flowers around the trans florets are the "ray florets".
I wanted to see a closer view of the flower so I cropped the 1:2 photo to a 1:1 photo in Photoshop CS6:
This clearly shows the banana like structure of the "trans florets".
I cropped the 1:1 photo to a 2:1 photo to get a closer look:
Next up, I photographed a 1:2 close-up of a lily:
This photo shows the brownish pollen on the stamen anther, and shows the large central pistil stigma of the lily.
I cropped the 1:2 photo to a 1:1 photo for a closer look:
And I cropped the 1:1 photo to get a 2:1 photo (I rotated the resulting photo in photoshop 90 degrees) :
This photo clearly show the sticky substance on top of the stigma which is used to catch pollen from the stamen.
Here is another 1:2 close-up photo of an old lily which shows the pollen from the stamen scattered on the lily petals; the photo also shows a stamen split open:
I cropped this 1:2 photo to a 1:1 photo:
And I cropped the 1:1 photo to get a 2:1 photo:
I want to be clear. These 1:2 close-up photographs were taken at 48 inches from in-front of the Nikkor 300mm f/4E PF lens. I have stated in the other posts, which showed photos using this lens, that this lens is sharp. I believe that these photographs in this post does demonstrate that this lens is indeed very sharp.
The only problem I have with using the Nikon 17E II teleconverter or the Kenko 68mm extension tubes at 48 inches working distance, is that the resulting photograph's depth of field is very shallow.
Therefore, I need to resort to photo stacking to get better DOF.
But, can I photo stack 1:2 close-up photos at a working distance of 48 inches. I have never stack photos before. I have Photoshop CS6 which will allow me to process several photos to produce a stacked photo.
So, my next post will present my effort at learning how to do photo stacking of several 1:2 close-up photos taken at 48 inches.
I am presenting these posts to show that this camera setup, is very useful for those persons, such as myself, that cannot kneel on the ground, nor bend way over, to take photographs of subjects that are not easily reached.
Leon