Weed Going to Seed (Macro)

Not a dandy lion, not lint, just some prickly weed from the back yard

Even though there’s little growth in our lawn grass during the new-fangled Seattle Dry Season, weeds manage to grow. This one has green-purple leaves and spikes on the stem, so it requires some attention to detail when removing. This one somehow missed my earlier effort, and manage to set some seeds.

But I clipped it before they could become airborne.

The clarity of the image is the result of experienced gained doing macro photography over the last few years. I used a special type of Macro lens, and M-Componon made in Germany by Schneider-Kreuznach. They do some amazing specialty lenses, and have for many years.

Technical point: the lens is an f/4, with an 80mm focal length. The “M” in the name is for Makro, so it is designed to make sharp images close up. This was shot at f/6.7, which is a slightly sharper setting for the lens. It’s pretty decent at f/4, but sharpens noticeably at f/6.7. It’s also got better contrast with the smaller aperture.

I now have a completely motorized macro setup, so I was able to get 50 shots of this subject, with small moves between shots to change the zone of focus. Only a very small portion of the subject was in focus for each shot, but when combined (focus-stacked) in Affinity Photo, only the sharp portion of each image is kept and the full depth of the image gradually appears.

Here’s a single image; not much is in focus, but it’s enough when you add together 50 slices like this one.

Single frame from macro series