Don't have a macro lens, so trying to do this challenge was, well, a challenge. All I had was my little 50mm/1.8 which was interesting to work with. Took a bunch of photo's and maybe had 4 that I thought were any good. Because of no macro, I had to crop SEVERELY. This here is about a 125% crop. Surprised with cropping so much, I'm not seeing more pixelation! Anyway, was happy to see I could achieve somewhat of a macro shot with no macro lens!
Passable result, but can't compete with a real lens. Be happy (and surprised) with a 5.8+.
Lighting:
- Straight old sunlight at midday.
Processing:
- Import into LR3
- Crop to size
- Send to PS CS6
- Run DeFine to get rid of noise
- Run CEP4 >> Pro Contrast and Lighten/Darken filters
- Run SEP2 >> Structure (smooth) filter
- Overlay of the CEP4 and SEP2 layers on luminosity blend mode (approx. 75%). Masked out background, so effect limited to bee.
- Sharpened
- Contrast adjustment layer
- Levels adjustment layer
- Denoise again
- Send back to LR3
- Adjust Contrast and Fill Light
- Cloning to remove distracting spots/dirt
- Dodge and Burn
- Apply slight vignette
- Save for web.
[Nov. 1st, 2013 08:32:42 AM]
Wow, most surprising ... got up to a 6.5 with 3 days to go. But starting the freefall now.
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