Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

Cotton Thistle

Leica, Macro

Prickly Customer.




Click the image for a larger version.

I took heavy leather gloves and Felco pruning shears to cut this puppy down and still managed to get injured by the thinner-than-hypodermic thorns. The stalk is woody and very hard, precluding my usual technique of inserting a bamboo skewer for mounting in the home studio. I had to resort to a couple of cable ties instead. You can just see the skewer at the base of the stalk.

Talk of a passive defense mechanism. Thorns everywhere. Whoever named this the ‘Cotton’ Thistle had a pretty warped sense of humor.

Here is the plant in its natural habitat, already some 6 feet tall:



As found.

Owing to the considerable depth of the plant I had to expose no fewer than 113 images for focus stacking, spanning the complete 6″ range of movement of the lower rack of the Nikon PB4 bellows.

A remarkable – and dangerous – plant.

Macro – Leica SL2S, 135mm El Nikon, Nikon PB4 bellows, three strobes, ISO 100 at F/22. 113 images focus stacked in Helicon Focus. Habitat – iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Logitech G502 wired mouse

Mac Mini M4

Time for a new one.




The Logitech G502 wired gaming mouse.

My Mac Mini suddenly lost the ability to drag and drop files. Given the frequent use of this function and its general indispensability, this fault rendered the computer near useless.

I set about reinstalling the Tahoe operating system – no change – then restored files from my Time Machine sequential back-up. Still no joy.

That left the mouse and trying a basic old Microsoft two button mouse had drag and drop working once more, so the old Logitech G500 had to be replaced. As it had served me well I went with its replacement, the Logitech G502, and stuck with a wired design as that’s one less thing to go wrong and one fewer battery to recharge. At $38 it’s some 50% less than the G500 was 13 years ago, in inflation adjusted dollars, so no complaints here.

Like the G500 the G502 has installable weights to add heft and I loaded up the G502 with all six. There’s also one spare provided. Each weighs 36 grams/1.27 oz, so fully loaded you are adding 216 grams/7.6 oz, which confers just the right heft for my use. Also, like with the G500, the scroll wheel’s click-stops can be disengaged for smooth scrolling, much my preferred setting.

There’s a downloadable app which claims to do all sort of magic things, including changing the color of the LED logo (how dumb is that?). Well, it is a gaming mouse, which explains a lot about the typical user, I suppose. Rather than mess with that I stuck with the well supported SteerMouse which recognized the G502 immediately and programming the several buttons – there are seven – took a couple of minutes. After some use I had to turn down the pointer sensitivity and speed to get the settings I was used to. Simple to do. The G502’s buttons are located in a manner similar to that on the G500 which makes transition easy.

If the G502 lasts as long as the G500 I will be a happy camper.

Feather

Leica, Macro

Deposited in my front yard.




Click the image for a larger version.

This was formerly the property of a Great Horned Owl – the one with ‘ear’ tufts. The bird can be heard – and occasionally seen – at dusk in my neighborhood.

I used just one strobe to transilluminate the feather from the rear with a reflector next to the lens to confer some front lighting.

Leica SL2S, 135mm El Nikkor at f/16, Nikon PB4 bellows, ISO200, 1 strobe. 9 images focus stacked in Helicon Focus. The ‘floating in air’ effect was obtained by inserting a thin bamboo stick into the base of the feather and subsequently removing it in post. Take a look at the large version, by clicking the image above, and you will see that the El Nikkor enlarging lens does not disappoint.

Common Blanketflower

Leica, Macro, Nikon lenses

Picked locally.

For an index of all Leica-related articles click here.

This charmingly named flower gets its name from the colorful blankets made by American Indians.




Click the image for a larger version.

Taken with the best macro lens I have, the 135mm El Nikkor. Leica SL2S, Nikon PB4 bellows, 36 images focus stacked. Helicon Focus really struggled with this one owing to the considerable depth, and I had to do quite a bit of retouching to remove ghosting. The long focus rack of the Nikon bellows works well here. That lens cost me just $65 …. no one wants enlarging lenses today, and it’s cheerfuly ‘repurposed’ here. It delivers an almost etched rendering. Just sent it out for a 24″ x 36″ print on the 44″ 12-ink Canon printer at the local Postal Annex.

In the style of the Dutch Masters

Leica, Macro, Paintings

Lighting is the key.

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Whereas the southern European painters of the 16th and 17th century typically focused on the adulation of religious figures, northern artists – Germany, Belgium and especially Holland – were more interested in showing property, a secular conviction. Never was this more so than in the 17th century work of the Dutch Masters which typically had a high window light one one side with the other half of the subject in the shade, some light captured from an adjacent white reflecting wall. And whether the subject was possessions, food, flowers or people, much the same lighting approach was used, to great effect.

A fine example is the work of Jan de Heem (1606-1684) who specialized in still life painting. This splendid Vase of Flowers (1660) can be found in the no less splendid National Gallery in Washington, D.C.:



Jan de Heem, Vase of Flowers, 1660.

In my image of the Common Ninebark wildflower I have emulated the Dutch lighting approach and while the subject is simpler than de Heem’s complex one, the lighting effect is similarly dramatic:



Common Ninebark

Leica SL2S, 100mm Macro-Elmar-R at f/11, Bellows-R, three Novatron strobes, ISO 100. Composite of 55 images, focus stacked in Helicon Focus. I prefer a touch of light on the black background to emphasize depth.

I had the local Postal Annex print this on their Canon 12-ink 44″ wide printer in a 24″ x 36″ size for wall display and the results is a knockout. The file I uploaded included the related Adobe sRGB color profile. With this not so little hummer costing over $5,000 and a set of ink cartridges running over $2,000 alone I’m not about to buy one for home use, especially when the print cost me a modest $45, and the color rendering is exactly what I see on my monitor. I would imagine that maintenance of this monster must be an absolute nightmare, what with 12 ink jet nozzles just waiting to clog …. definitely a case of where delegation beats ownership.