Exploring Macro at Botanic Gardens

We had a day at the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge yesterday in rather poor light. I spent the session before lunch showing a new member the techniques that are available for macro. I was using an Olympus with 60mm macro so explored both straight shots with as small aperture as was possible in the low light (image 1,2 ,12, 13), with focus bracketing (third, fourth images - 30 images processed in Zerene Stacker) and also with the in-camera stacking of 8 images that my model can do (rest of images).

Botanic Gardens 2

The weather was very variable on Monday and this was reflected in the 'colours' that the Full Spectrum camera recorded in the open and under the trees. My favourite ones were those taken under foliage such as the first image and those inside a Gunnera plant.

Full-spectrum photography at Cambridge Botanic Gardens

Most full-spectrum digital cameras can detect some ultraviolet, all of the visible and much of the near infrared spectrum (350 nm to 1000 nm). However, the longer infrared waves are recorded the strongest and remove much of the visible light in the blue and green areas in a full spectrum photograph. Here are some examples from a day in the Cambridge Botanic Gardens yesterday. Interested how the Greenbottle's metallic colours recorded so strongly despite the background information above!. The first image, taken with a lot of green foliage overhead cutting out some of the shorter wavelengths, reminded me of trips to northern Scandinavia and the views as our small plane came into land!!

Botanic Gardens Cambridge

I concentrated on multiexposures and focus-stacked closeups during a visit to the Gardens this morning.

Close-up at Botanical Gardens

I was using an  Olympus OM-System 50mm 1.8  legacy lens (lefthand images) on Saturday at the Gardens as I needed some images for a talk I am giving next week. I took most shots with a comparison image using my Fuji dedicated 50mm Zeiss Touit lens (righthand images). I always enjoy the soft pastel colours and backgrounds from the Olympus lens (both are used wide open).