OAFC Day 9: Gentle Sepia

Catch of the day: Gentle sepia

Last night I randomly chose the gentle sepia art filter and went out to photograph the moon. I came back with an OK photo, but I have no doubt that processing a RAW file would have given a better result. I then went back to work and waited for my morning photography session. When it arrived and I was taking a photo of the sunrise, I noticed that my body cap lens was extra blurry on the edges and I have absolutely no idea why… I thought it was an artifact of the filter and that gentle sepia was like diorama and “blurred the edges”, but I switched to natural mode and was still experiencing the problem. This is off topic, but I decided that since the BCL is fairly cheap and couldn’t be TOO complicated internally that I was going to take it apart and see if anything was askew inside that I could fix. After disassembling and reassembling, the problem did not resolve itself. So… I decided to experiment and turn the internal lens element around to try and mimic what can be done with a lens reversal adapter to make a cheap macro.. AND IT WORKED! I have a “body cap macro lens” LOL!!  The “catch of the day” shot above and “Zuiko” below are examples. I had to do some customization and there is a HEAVY vignette, but the results from testing have been pretty good... On one hand it SUCKS because my shortest focal length for landscapes is now 80mm o_O but on the other I am stoked to put this bad boy in action and see what kind of up close shots I can get. The working distance is about 7mm with a DOF of around 1mm. I photographed a little over 50mm on my ruler so this is far from a true macro (I THINK this comes out to apx. 1:3 reproduction ratio), but I was impressed nonetheless... This will be the first thing I write about after the OAFC is done. Since this post is supposed to be about sepia, all I am going to say is that shooting in this mode is VERY FAR from my style and I would rather just shoot in traditional black and white. Here are some results:

November moon, 150mm, f/5.6, 1/350, iso 400

Wagon wheels, 50mm, f/8, 1/250, iso 200

Pollution, 50mm, f/5.6, 1/3000, iso 200

Alfie 40mm, f/8, 1/250, iso 200

Zuiko, 15mm, f/8, 1/10, iso 3200

I am running all sorts of late and want to go test out my body cap macro, so no more on sepia... but I hope followers of the OAFC enjoyed the photos today even if they weren't MY favorite! Come back tomorrow to see what else is in store and for more examples of the body cap macro! =)

Sam D.