I just don't see how's it possible.. I have the Canon 100mm Macro and I've taken lady bug pictures before and you can get nowhere near that close.. Regardless of aperture, something else has to be in the equation unless he's making some ungodly large crops, in which sharpness would suffer.. So I'm just not sure.
Well, it IS possible... or we wouldn't be seeing the images here.
Whether or not he's coming clean with every detail in his steps may be uncertain but in his defense that's totally his propagative. I guess most photographers don't tell everything - I know I often don't.
If for no other reason than just to stop people from saying things I don't want to hear about how I went from real life to image and whether or not it's "OK" in
their opinion. Personally I think he's invented a microscopic make-up set complete with miniature mascara and highliner pencil.
If you look at his top image he's really pushing the limits of sharpening. To make things bigger there's some pretty cool and capable tools out there like AleinSkin BlowUP and Genuine Fractal 5, either of which with I can go to about 300% before it starts falling apart and begins to start looking crystalized.
As far as getting close there's always closeup corrective lenses. Here's two shots I took with a No. 2 AC closeup lens in combination with the lens's own macro capabilities:
And these are pulled back petty far. With just a #2 I can zoom up on just his head and 1st set of shoulders - including antennae. So these are about 4 times the mag as his posted images and the #2 offers very little magnification - it mostly just gets you a little closer. These are unedited and just color balanced from the RAW by the way. This camera is a total POS too. I think it sells for about $200 now and the lens is pretty low grade compared to a pro set. It's the
Minolta (wanna-be SLR) A2 - which I got mainly for the bullet-time effect I was doing for a TV commercial. They're very responsive and I could afford and fire 48 of them at once from a laptop rig. This is the last remaining soldier. :hugs:
It sports a non-detachable 28mm ~ 200mm (2.8 - 3.5) with a macro at either end. It's 200mm F11 as opposed to 105mm F32 but I can easily get shots like this at f5 or 6:
This is after processing and has been scaled to 25% of it's original size. Each flower here is maybe just one or two millimeters larger than a ladybug - they are TINY little flowers! So if he scaled his only by 50% then that's just about right. Certainly not enough wiggle room for sincere doubt.
Maybe if we're real kewl and kiss lots of butt we can get him to post a detailed step-by-step for one of his images - "with pictures and arrows on the back of each one explaining what each one was in order to be used in court against us." - Officer Oddy.
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