Up until recently, I was using an ancient copy of ACDSee I’d obtained from a magazine cover CD for browsing images on my computer. For years, ACDSee was one of the best image browsers available mainly due to the blazing speed at which it opened images for viewing. The secret was to pre-fetch the next image whilst you were looking at the current one; simple, but extremely effective.

Over the years, I’d tried various upgraded versions of ACDSee, but none ever really matched the performance of the version I already had. This was in no doubt due to ACDSee becoming bloated as more and more, some would say unnecessary, features were built into it.

Whilst this meant that my primary image browser lacked modern features such as RAW support, it didn’t really matter much to me since being able to view a large number of images very quickly was much more important especially since I wasn’t shooting in RAW.

Fast forward to almost the present day and I’m shooting almost exclusively in RAW when using my EOS 40D and having to import my photo’s into Lightroom before I’m able to view them.

Not any more…

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Today, the air was calm and the early evening sun was offering some great lighting for some more testing of my new 100mm macro lens. Our garden isn’t currently looking particularly exciting at first glance, but on a macro level it’s a completely different situation. With a few flowers coming into bloom, it was an ideal opportunity to get my tripod out and get down low with the vegetation…

When done well, I’ve seen macro photography offering some fantastic perspectives of the world around us, but making little things big wasn’t quite as easy as it seemed. What could be easier than to get up close to something and pressing the shutter release? Well, actually, a lot!

Of the different types of photographs I’ve taken, my first real stint into macro photography was probably the most involving so far for a couple of reasons:

First of all, as well as making subjects appear closer than they really are, a telephoto lens also magnifies any movement of the lens or the subject so good camera support and a reasonably fast shutter speed are essential. Faster shutter speeds usually mean choosing a faster (larger) aperture or increasing the ISO sensitivity at the cost of increased visual noise.

Secondly, faster apertures combined with a telephoto focal length and a subject that’s only a short distance away from the lens result in shallow depth of field. Whilst this can make a photograph appear more dramatic, it means there’s less of your subject in focus. So in order to get more depth of field, a smaller, slower aperture is needed.

So on one hand, more light and faster shutter speeds are required and on the other a smaller aperture is desired for increased depth of field. I think half of the fun of macro photography is in trying to find a balance between the two sets of requirements. If you have it, technology can help help; image stabilisation to reduce camera shake, image sensors with improved light sensitivity to give less noise at higher ISO settings, and ring flash units to ‘freeze’ moving subjects for example.

That said, technology isn’t always better than using what nature provided us with especially when it comes to focussing macro shots. I found that the 100mm Canon lens would sometimes hunt and so I had to position an autofocus point on a subject, focus and then compose the shot. That might have worked well for landscapes, but even the slightest movement can throw focus out and that includes the repositioning after auto-focussing. It didn’t take long for me to switch the autofocus off and I’m glad to report that the Canon lens had a very smooth focussing ring making it much easier to get what I wanted sharp.

Many of the most interesting subjects in our garden are to be found close to ground level so that means getting down and dirty quite literally. Fortunately, my tripod has legs that splay, allowing the camera to get close to the low-level action and the LCD live view feature of the EOS 40D made manual focussing a cleaner affair as I didn’t need to lie down to do it.

The 40D’s mirror lock-up feature helped to reduce the risk of camera shake further by making sure the camera mirror was already flipped up and any movement caused by my finger pressing down on the shutter release button was eliminated by using the short self-timer.

All in all, I had a fun-filled hour and managed to get some shots I was happy with. For such ’small’ photography, it really does make you think a lot!

Mostly, I’m an online shopper, especially when it comes to electronic goods as Internet prices are usually the most competitive although I’m not averse to shopping on the high street as long as the price is right. It’s always nicer to have that instant gratification of taking a new purchase home rather than waiting for the courier to arrive.

Anyway, the time had come to buy a new Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens (I’d tested a friend’s previously and loved the results) so I checked online and found that the best price was £349 from Warehouse Express (not including the £40 Canon cashback offer). Jacobs were £0.99 more expensive and Jessops were way off the mark at £379.99.

Of the three, Jessops and Jacobs both had stores in the city centre. So, off I went. Naturally, my first stop was Jacobs, but they didn’t have the lens in stock. I was a bit surprised, since the lens appears to be quite a popular choice. Anyway, I remembered that Jessops would match the price of competitors selling the same products at a lower price so I made my way over to the store.

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Since some of my shots from my trip to Formby Point turned out well, I thought I’d take one to get printed to see how it would look on paper.

I decided to get this one printed at 10″ x 8″ at the local ASDA store.

Costing just £1 and taking only an hour to process, the photo printed out quite well although it was slightly cropped on either side. I don’t know why I thought it was going to fit since the resolution of the image was 3223 x 2149 which is a 3:2 just like 12″ x 8″ is! At least I’ll know for next time.

As the first print from my new kit, I’m quite happy with the quality and will start looking through the other shots I’ve taken to see if there are others I’d like to get printed, perhaps even framed.

I predict that friends and family are going to be receiving lots of photo prints for Christmas and birthdays!

Photography has gone through many evolutionary stages since it was invented. Each of these stages featured technologies that pushed it forward into the next stage. Consider concepts such as:

• autofocus to take the work out of making sure your subject looks sharp,
• the digital imaging sensor which provided a non-permanent method of recording images as an alternative to burn-once silver halide film,
• the RAW image file format that allowed much tweaking of a photograph’s exposure and colour balance after it’s been taken.

Now get ready for what is likely to be the next evolutionary stage in photography…

Refocussing after a photograph has been taken!

Imagine never having another out-of-focus photograph or being able to refocus an image onto another point at any time after the shot was actually taken.

Refocus Imaging are developing a method of capturing an entire light field entering a lens and then applying computational photography to focus the image using software.

See for yourself, the results are amazing!