Mitutoyo 10x NA 0.28, tube lens Raynox, 125 mm
Illumination: UV (365nm)
(Pano from 2 stacks)
Portrait of a hoverfly (UVIVF) by UVO_eber
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Mitutoyo 10x NA 0.28, tube lens Raynox, 125 mm
Illumination: UV (365nm)
(Pano from 2 stacks)
Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) is a flower that grows as “weed” in our gardens, and I often leave it be – the blossoms are beautiful, and it can be beneficial / edible. Young leaves can be eaten in salads, and older leaves can be used in soups as a thickening agent. Also, the flowers vibrantly fluoresce under ultraviolet light!
This is another image created with the iPhone 15 Pro Max paired with the Moment 75mm Macro lens. It’s a wonderful combination for macro explorations with your mobile phone, albeit not the only option. There are plenty of very high-quality add-on macro lenses on the market, just as well as there are plentiful garbage options. This just happens to be the one that works well for me. Coupled to the main camera, we’re capable of generating 48MP RAW files which give us a lot of flexibility in post-processing.
One thing that is always true of macro photography, whether it be with a traditional camera or with a mobile phone, is that the closer you get to your subject, the shallower your depth of field becomes. With resolution pushing close to 50 megapixels, you can sacrifice some of the resolution for increased depth of your in-focus details. Shoot a little farther away knowing that you can crop afterwards. These flowers have volume, they are not flat. If I have the center stamens in focus, the rest of the center of the flower will be out of focus, with focus returning to portions of the petals. It is only a thin slice of detail we’re able to capture, and precise focusing is helpful. To that end, I use the Halide app which offers manual focus control with “focus peaking”, allowing me to precisely tell where the greatest details will be in the frame.
I also find it helpful to use a Bluetooth remote trigger, any model will do. Keeping the camera as stable as possible is key, which includes not actively touching it to trigger the capture. If you have to do so, use a three-second or ten-second timer to let things settle down. I’d rather not take this approach if it can be avoided, since a plucked flower under intense UV light will start to fade quickly, and it will begin to move slightly in that process. Faster is better. Holding the camera in place is a Platypod Grip, which is by far the best phone holder for photographic purposes I have used; it’s worth the minor investment.
Photographic flowers in ultraviolet light can be transformative. You need a clean source of UV light that doesn’t spill over into the visible spectrum, and my go-to lights are the Convoy S2+. You can find them from many vendors, but make sure that you cannot see the diode in the front – there should be an opaque black piece of glass present, which is likely a ZWB2 filter. Without getting into the weeds (pun intended) about it, this helps remove any spill-off into the violet and blue colours. Our goal is to illuminate the subject only with light that we cannot see. I often use more than one flashlight for these images, which evens things out and speeds up the exposure time.
To understand what’s happening: the camera is nothing special, no modifications; you’re capturing visible light. However, the light source originates at higher-energy (shorter) wavelengths that the camera cannot detect. When this higher-energy light hits the subject, it excites electrons in specific atoms and raises them to a higher orbit. Then, almost instantaneously, they decay back to their original orbit and emit energy. However, something was lost in that process – the electrons moved, that takes energy. The emitted light therefore has lower energy, pushing it from the ultraviolet spectrum into the visible spectrum. The more the electrons were excited, the more energy is lost, and the deeper into the visible wavelengths the resulting light will become. That’s what we call the “Stokes Shift”. Science!
To see the original image, here’s a link: donkom.ca/bts/IMG_5224.jpg . Note that in the fluorescent version, there are blue veins running through the petals which are mostly invisible in the “regular” image. It almost feels like the plant/flower has a circulatory system, and that’s because… it does! Not quite like ours, and “circulatory” takes on a different meaning here, but there’s a lot going on in a flower. Coupled with the often-lobed ends to the petals and the stamens symbolizing a heart, the image gets the name “Heart of the Mallow”.
Срез банана. Флуоресценция. Макро с объективом Olympus OM-System Zuiko Auto-Macro 50mm f/3.5. Освещение УФ-светодиодом 365nm со светофильтром ZWB2. Камера Fujifilm X-T5
While I await the delivery of a new “professional” camera, I aim to explore just how capable an iPhone is – especially for macro photography. Shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max, there’s plenty of power, even when exploring more technical subjects such as ultraviolet fluorescence.
Plants in the allium family vary vastly in the size of their blossoms, from the gigantic “big ball” alliums to the more subtle wild onions, such as this. While the wide-angle lens on the iPhone 15 series is certainly capable of getting up close to them, the resolution is lower than the main camera. This is one of the reasons to look at the iPhone 16 Pro models, which improve the macro capabilities with a higher-resolution sensor for the wide-angle camera; There are, however, other ways to improve your game. I use the Moment 75mm add-on lens which significantly improves the magnification of the main camera, allowing me to shoot 48MP RAW files.
48MP RAW from a phone isn’t the same as 48MP RAW from a larger sensor on a traditional interchangeable lens camera, but it does offer more flexibility. Better ability to crop into the frame, better dynamic range, and better colour correction than would otherwise be afforded by shooting with more “basic” modes. I believe the default camera app now allows you to choose this, but I prefer Halide for many other bits of additional control as my camera app.
The image is shot in a dark room, with UV flashlights aimed at the subject. The exposures can be a little lengthy, so a 3-second timer is helpful to touch the camera lightly and then give it time to settle before the exposure starts. A simple Bluetooth camera trigger works to make this more instantaneous, and only costs a few dollars. You still want the camera to be rock-solid steady and easy to position, so a good holder is essential. The best I’ve tried is this one from Platypod: www.platypod.com/products/platypod-grip
Post-processing to get the most out of these images has a few tricks, mostly to bring out the hidden colours in some parts of the flower. Allium flowers fluoresce mostly into the blue spectrum, with yellow-green pollen and stems. In order to make sure that these colours (other than blue) are properly represented in the final image, I employ a one-two punch: sway the white balance to be warmer (slightly diminishing the blue), and then increase the vibrance and saturation to re-balance the colour palette. The blue will come back, but so will the other colours that were less prominent. White-balance corrections are far more powerful when shooting in a RAW format.
Here's a “normal light” version of this image: donkom.ca/bts/IMG_5234.jpg - the fluorescence is quite transformative!
Fluorescing 0.5 mushrooms :) (Eyemik AUTO MULTI-COATED 1:2.8 f=28 mm lens under the UV light)
Méduse boussole du pacifique / Japanese sea nettle
View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
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View more at Fulgoromorpha Checklist: Planthoppers
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View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
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View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
www.nickybay.com
View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
www.nickybay.com
View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
www.nickybay.com
View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
www.nickybay.com
View more at Opiliones Checklist: Harvestmen
www.nickybay.com
