After the portrait module I’m back on home turf with ‘Nature’ today in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course.
He suggests getting up at dawn for a dew-fresh close-up of grass blades but yesterday, as the late afternoon sun backlit a patch of our front lawn, I went for his alternative suggestion of adding the ‘dew’ with a fine-rose watering can.
My usual approach to flower photography is to snap away and hope for the best, so it was interesting to try his more considered approach, using a tripod and setting up the shot with a bit of extra care.
Remote Control
This is where the ability to remote control my Olympus DSLR with an iPad proved useful (you can also use a smart phone). It enables you to control aperture, shutter speed, ISO ‘film speed’ and focus without crouching down to look at the subject via the camera’s viewfinder or flip-up screen.
Leaf Veins
The final challenge was to photograph a backlit leaf. My Huion light pad wasn’t bright enough so I sprayed the leaf with water and stuck it to the studio window.
The whole beginner’s course is designed for a digital camera with an general purpose ‘kit lens’. Mine zooms from 14-42mm, which in traditional 35mm cameras that would be 28-84mm: ranging from a wide-angle (28mm) that doesn’t distort perspective too much to a short telephoto (84mm) that is useful for portraits.
When I bought the camera it also came with a dedicated macro lens and a modest telephoto zoom (80mm to 300mm in traditional 35mm terms) so I’m impressed at how well the everyday kit lens has performed as a macro lens on the leaf.