Some Plants in My Front Yard

[pez]

I found an extension tube set on eBay and couldn't wait to try it out on my same-vintage manual 50 1.7 lens (c.1979):

 

[Judobreaker]

Not too bad, but you're going to have to close up the aperture a little. Your DOF is a bit too thin now.
With macro I'm usually using apertures between f/8 and f/22, I go wider sometimes but the DOF gets extremely thin.

Keep it up.

 

[Ballistics]

YOu can also give focus stacking a shot

 

[TATTRAT]

Well, everything is soft, but you get the idea. A focusing rail will help a lot, then, stack your exposures. You see what is possible though, and that's what's up. There is a WHOLE world of macro to every shot you can take, have fun with it.

 

[pez]

Thanks for the tips! Actually, these were hand-held, it was rather breezy, and I was having fun with my new tubes. I do understand the DOF dealy, and have been shooting with various macro lenses for a few years. However, I'm a bokeh freak...
Ballistics- I've never tried focus stacking. It looks interesting- I may give it a shot! Thanks.

Ahh- I have a rail, but I sort of hate it.

 

[cgipson1]

Nobody mentioned it, but these are all a stop or two underexposed also. Since you have the non-electrical tubes, Exif doesn't show much... what aperture did you shoot these at?

 

[cgipson1]

Thanks for the tips! Actually, these were hand-held, it was rather breezy, and I was having fun with my new tubes. I do understand the DOF dealy, and have been shooting with various macro lenses for a few years. However, I'm a bokeh freak...
Ballistics- I've never tried focus stacking. It looks interesting- I may give it a shot! Thanks.

Ahh- I have a rail, but I sort of hate it.

You can focus stack by hand, if you can brace against something and you are very stable.. just by incrementing the focus very carefully. But it is much, much more difficult than using a rail!

 

[pez]

Nobody mentioned it, but these are all a stop or two underexposed also. Since you have the non-electrical tubes, Exif doesn't show much... what aperture did you shoot these at?

I believe they ranged from f2 to f5.6 (#3)- again, hand-held, etc, plus I was wanting a narrow dof just to see if the lens retained it's great oof qualities with the tubes- didn't mean to cause a stir, lol. I've never used tubes before, except the ones for my lensbabies. Although the histogram is indeed bunched to the left, unless my monitor is way off (no doubt possible...) they can't be one or two stops under exposed. Adding even one stop to the RAWs in LR4 makes all three images pretty washed out to my eye.

 

[480sparky]

Some aren't that underexposed, they just need to have the black & white points adjusted and a bit of S in the curve.

 

[cgipson1]

Nobody mentioned it, but these are all a stop or two underexposed also. Since you have the non-electrical tubes, Exif doesn't show much... what aperture did you shoot these at?

I believe they ranged from f2 to f5.6 (#3)- again, hand-held, etc, plus I was wanting a narrow dof just to see if the lens retained it's great oof qualities with the tubes- didn't mean to cause a stir, lol. I've never used tubes before, except the ones for my lensbabies. Although the histogram is indeed bunched to the left, unless my monitor is way off (no doubt possible...) they can't be one or two stops under exposed. Adding even one stop to the RAWs in LR4 makes all three images pretty washed out to my eye.

I would suggest you need to calibrate your monitor then.. sounds like you have the brightness turned way too high...

The bottom edit is what I see as an accurate exposure... (it looks blown due to being OOF, but is reasonably close to a correct exposure on a calibrated monitor)

 

[pez]

Some aren't that underexposed, they just need to have the black & white points adjusted and a bit of S in the curve.

I like this, looks good. I often do put a little S-curve in there, but didn't in this case and this is an improvement.

 

[pez]

Nobody mentioned it, but these are all a stop or two underexposed also. Since you have the non-electrical tubes, Exif doesn't show much... what aperture did you shoot these at?

I believe they ranged from f2 to f5.6 (#3)- again, hand-held, etc, plus I was wanting a narrow dof just to see if the lens retained it's great oof qualities with the tubes- didn't mean to cause a stir, lol. I've never used tubes before, except the ones for my lensbabies. Although the histogram is indeed bunched to the left, unless my monitor is way off (no doubt possible...) they can't be one or two stops under exposed. Adding even one stop to the RAWs in LR4 makes all three images pretty washed out to my eye.

I would suggest you need to calibrate your monitor then.. sounds like you have the brightness turned way too high...

The bottom edit is what I see as an accurate exposure... (it looks blown due to being OOF, but is reasonably close to a correct exposure on a calibrated monitor)

View attachment 46507

I see what you're talking about, and the yellow, focused region is improved without a doubt. But the rest of the flower looks blown out to me, and on other monitors, too. Maybe it's just me. I increased the exposure by ~.42 stop in LR (from RAW), and boosted the yellow band in luminance and saturation by 15%, and also put in a little S-curve for this version:

 

[Nervine]

Still under exposed. How does it look if you compare your latest version to Cgipson1's?

 

[amolitor]

You can go quite a bit brighter than that without losing the highlights.

Here's a technique:

Adjust curves to taste, let the highlights blow out, just make the overall tonality look good. Now take a copy of the original layer, and using whatever techniques are available in the tools you're using, "paint in" from that layer a just a hint of the original, to fill the texture back into the blown highlights. With GIMP this is done with a layer mask, but I think photoshop has some fancier brush technology you can use.