This article discusses handheld macro photography and why I prefer using my Olympus E-M1X and M.Zuiko 60 mm macro lens over the full frame gear I owned in the past.
As regular readers know, I very much dislike using a tripod and only do so when it’s absolutely necessary. In the past when I tried to create handheld macro images with my full frame equipment I would very seldom get any useable images. I simply could not hold my full frame equipment steady enough. It was an exercise in frustration. My full frame gear always seemed to get in the way of my creativity.
Today marks the end of Year 8 for this photography website with 1,237 articles having been published since 2015, and 127 added this year. It certainly has been an interesting ride to be here with all of you again this year.
It can be an enjoyable creative experiment to produce a series of images in keeping with a theme like Emerging From Darkness. Using a mirrorless camera system for this type of creative execution is ideal since we can see how our images will look in real time without any guesswork. Obviously this is important when purposely underexposing images.
Yesterday I visited Niagara Falls with my wife, and took the opportunity to create some Floral Showhouse HHFS (handheld focus stacked) photographs.
All of the images featured in this article were captured handheld using an M.Zuiko 60 mm macro f/2.8 lens, along with the in-camera focus stacking technology resident in my E-M1X . I had my camera set to record and combine 10 photographs per capture, with a focus differential of 4.
Sometimes when we’re out with our cameras the world around us doesn’t cooperate, and only offers us slim pickings in terms of subject matter. Such was the case last Saturday. It was a very quiet morning for bird photography at Hendrie Valley. So… I left early and headed off to the Royal Botanical Gardens. Rather than being greeted by a plethora of flower image opportunities… slim pickings awaited me.
This article discusses some handheld flower photography options and features a range of images captured using various cameras and techniques. The majority of the photographs illustrated in this posting were created using an E-M1X.
Depending on the camera gear a photographer owns, their choice for some additional stabilization or acquiring a difficult shooting angle, may come down to using a tripod or stool. It has been over three years since I began shooting with Olympus M4/3 camera gear and thus far I’ve not had any need to use any of my tripods or a monopod. This would change if I began to experiment with light painting using the Live Composite mode.
This article features some in-camera HHFS macro flower photographs captured with a 16mm extension tube and M.Zuiko 60 mm f/2.8 macro lens. Falling firmly into the ‘test’ category, the images in this posting were created simply to see what would happen when macro flower images were captured handheld using in-camera focus stacking technology, and a 16 mm extension tube.
This article shares some in-camera focus stacking test images captured handheld with an M.Zuiko 100-400 mm f/5-6.3 IS zoom lens. I really didn’t know what to expect using my E-M1X’s in-camera focus stacking capability with this particular lens. In the past I most often used the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 mm f/2.8 zoom or the M.Zuiko 60 mm f/2.8 macro with in-camera focus stacking.
The 100-400 does have a reasonably short minimum focusing distance of 1.3 metres, so I thought this test was worth a try. These test photographs fall under the ‘let’s see what happens’ category.
Fully appreciating camera technology is something that we sometimes forget to do as we take our camera gear for granted on occasion. I visited the Royal Botanical Gardens yesterday for about an hour and 45 minutes. During that short time I successfully captured 127 handheld in-camera focus stacked macro images of various flowers and foliage. I did miss 7 attempts.
This website celebrates the joy of photography and features a wide range of photographic subject matter. The content is designed to appeal to a wide range of people interested in photography. The website also demonstrates the image creating capability of small sensor cameras including micro four thirds, 1", and 1/2.3" cameras.
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