Botanic Garden challenges

 We had a good turnout for our camera club trip to Cambridge Botanic Gardens and generally kept the public amused with our various antics while fulfilling five challenges - Contrast, Close up, Colour, Movement and Creative. Here are two attempts each at the subjects.

Fungi at Brandon Country Park

 Beautiful autumn day at Brandon with golden sunlight through the trees yesterday for our RPS Nature Group Fungi hunt. There was a good variety around though not in the large numbers we have seen some years. I concentrated on some of the very small specimens found in the leaf litter etc. Mostly these are single shots at F13/F16 with 23mm lens plus close-up lens. The last two images are focus-stacked at F2 and F16 (No noise reduction at the moment as computer a bit poorly!)

Using Legacy Telephoto Lens

 While clearing out the loft, we found an old 135 Takumar lens and so I decided to attach it with a suitable M42 mount to my Fuji. It is regarded as one of the best telephoto lenses and used at  f3.5 aperture gives lovely 'soft' images and muted colours. Perfect for a misty morning in the wood.

Using Macro Wide-angle in the Churchyard

On last sunny Sunday, I used a 12mm Zeiss with a 4X close-up filter to photograph the mosses on the church walls, snowdops and gravestones. A characteristic of the lens is that it is very sharp and renders colours very brightly. The circular image of lichens has an extra 2.5Xcloseup filter in addition to the 4X giving a strong vignette. 

Bug's Eye View of Garden 2

 Here is the second set of images from my close-up images of the garden flowers using an Olympus Zuiko 50mm with 16mm extension ring, I shot at F1.8 getting in close amongst the flowers.