Good time to photograph tulips

It's great time to photograph tulips now while they are blooming. It's a long weekend in Belgium and in neighbor countries and the weather is nice. A good place to go is Keukenhof in Netherlands, not far from Hague. Thousands of tulips of all different sorts and colors, and many other flowers.




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Trying macro photography

I've tried macro photography with Canon EF 85mm f1.8 lens having +4 lens attached; and with old manual Russian-made Helios-44 lens + cheap Chinese extension ring.

The option with EF 85mm and +4 lens means full electronic control with autofocus.

Cheap extension ring is a piece of metal only, no electronic connection between camera and lens. This is why I used old Helios-44 - because it has manual aperture control.

The result with EF85 is in general good, but chromatic aberrations are strong on contrasty edges (depending on particular scene of course).

Helios-44 resulted much less CA however the transition between area in focus and completely unsharp part isn't very pleasant to my eye. EF85 produces a softer blur.

I must note however that the comparison isn't fair because I tried 2 lens in different conditions. Now as I noticed some interesting point I'll need to find some time to make a real comparison.


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