Another gray day here. I’m ready for some green. I went to the table of houseplants to scare up a green macro subject. The subject is a Haworthia species; I believe it is Haworthia fasciata, though I am not certain. I have been exercising the Nikon PB-6 focusing bellows the last couple of days. I am learning more about it each time. Today we have it set up with the EL-Nikkor 75mm f/4 N enlarger lens. I happen to have the aperture taped at f/11 for another project. I am using manual exposure, at 1/2 sec here. I’ve been figuring out the exposure by simple trial and error, a very easy process using the Nikon D90 LCD screen. Of course, it seems easy when I am sitting at my kitchen table with a potted plant.
The bellows system is very powerful. We are only at about half way extended here. I have lit the scene with a small but powerful LCD flashlight. I’ve been using this flashlight for handy lighting in several images since I started my One Picture a Day personal challenge. It is a very white, pure light. The texture of the green resolves nicely. The white raised ridges, though, had a tendency to blow out to lose detail. When I reduced exposure, the ridges remained too bright, even to the point where the green was too dark. Perhaps a little macro HDR is in order. Here I have used Aperture to adjust the “Recovery” and the “Highlights” sliders to full strength to try to salvage as much detail as I can. We are at ISO 200 here. For additional entertainment, here’s a crop taken at 100% size:
Macro Haworthia
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