with the drop of a needle

...another of my ‘flash macro’ shots from the forests of Nevada County, CA. For this one, unlike, ‘lichen drop’, I just tried to get a clear reflection of the surrounding needles and the sky – not something within the drop. To say it was easier was an understatement: I took about 25 shots and got at least 10 that did what I tried to do. I attribute a lot of that to the camera, the Nikon D80, and little to the discovery of macro using a very soft flash. This needle was completely in the shade so the “blow out” reflections are part flash (the big one) and part sunlight reflected from another drop that was in direct sunlight (the smaller). On some of my edits, I removed the blowouts but removing them made me feel like I was ‘cheating the shot’ and making a new one in an editing program. I could do without them but they are ‘honest’. LOL!

And for the sake of some love…
___________
Nikon D80
18-55 lens
ISO 1600
f-stop: 5.6
Exposure time: 1/1250
Focal length: 55
Metering: spot
full manual
creative setting: flat
white balance: auto
flash: 1/4
Tripod: Quanteray 8500 (tho I didn’t need it with this exposure speed)
editing program: Corel PaintShop Pro XI enlargement only. BTW, this one couldn’t enlarge as much as most because of the nature of the extreme close-up: it looks like crap too much bigger so I wouldn’t suggest buying a huge print. LOL!