Photographing Flutterers and Sultans with an unlikely lens and adaptor combo

Ever since my trip to Oebaha, where I managed to photograph some Sultans I have worked on perfecting my skills by trying to come up with a minimalist set up, which means leaving the tripod and my flash behind.

The first pictures taken documenting the first record of Sultan in the Oe-Cusse Region, was a proof of concept, as I paired two unlikely pieces of gear, the M. Zuiko 75-300 mm variable aperture telephoto lens and the Meike, automatic 16mm extension tube.

At first I though it would not work, but it does work. So the tip is if you happen to use this set up (I use it with a OMD EM10 mark ii body, with a grip), to:
1- Switch on the In Body Image Stabilization (IBIS) and put it in Automatic;
2- Select your focus point to the centre of the frame;
3- Zoom in until the image is blurry but you can make sense of the outlines of twigs, etc.
4- Half press the shutter for it to focus;

So lets say your Dragonfly is perching on a twig and there is a lot of background noise, and you did not reach the expected results using the first approach. Then you can try to do the following:

1- Select your focus point to the centre of the frame;
2- Zoom in until you can visually note the different contrast between the twig and Dragonfly;
3- Move the camera so the centre point covers part of the more "contrasty" part of your composition;
4- Half press the shutter to attain focus;
5- Zoom slowly followed by Half press of the shutter until you reach the desired Focal length (which is often the 300 mm), and shoot away.

Publicado el abril 28, 2019 04:45 MAÑANA por ruidasilvapinto