Thank You Global Warming: Spring Comes Early to Wash DC

I'm a huge fan of macro photography, so I was especially stoked when, a few months ago, I was able to find a good deal on a set of close-up diopters for the Hasselblad.  These diopters attach to the front of whatever lens is on the camera, and act to change the minimum focus distance of that lens.  In other words, they convert an ordinary lens into a macro lens.  Close-up diopters are cheap, easy to use, and don't affect the f-stop, but because they alter the optical path in a way that the lens was not originally designed for, some loss of image quality is inevitable.  An extension tube is also a great option for shooting macro on a Hasselblad.  Tubes don't alter the optical path at all, so the image quality is (theoretically) better than with diopters, but most extension tubes do cut ~2 stops of light, and since the majority of macro shots are taken around ~f/11 or stopped down even further, there often won't be enough light to use an extension tube, especially if you're like me and prefer to shoot macro using only ambient light.
I was curious to see how these close-up filters would work with the Zeiss 80mm f/2.8 lens on my 500C/M, and so with an early spring just beginning, I decided to give it a go.  I also decided to use a faster film.  Until now, I've been using Kodak Portra 160, but for macro I figured that Portra 400 would be the way to go since the extra speed (ISO 400 vs. 160) would allow me to stop down the lens by an extra stop or two, which is the only way to get a usable depth of field in macro.

This was essentially a test roll to see how well the close-up diopters worked, and to challenge myself to make some interesting shots around where I live here in Rockville MD.  I have, in fact, done most of my macro shooting around my neighborhood.  That's one of the best things about macro photography - it's easy to make interesting photos almost anywhere (even Rockville!).

Let me preface this next part by saying that these are really small flowers, about as big as a quarter, so the picture may not look as "macro" as it really is.  That being said, close-up filters don't actually allow for 1:1 shooting (1:1 is the reproduction ratio, and it means that the image on the film is the same size as the object in real-life), so technically speaking, this isn't a "macro" shot.  If I had to guess, I'd say that my +3 diopter, which is the most aggressive one I have, allows for shooting at 1:3, maybe 1:4, but that's just a guess. 

The nice part about shooting a Hasselblad is that the image can be cropped significantly and still have more than enough resolution for an 8x10 print.  Here's a tight crop from the picture above...

As you can see, the picture is still quite sharp.  Even with half the frame cropped out, the grain is barely visible, and this is an ISO 400 film! 

I should mention that these images were scanned at my local camera place, which, after a change of ownership, seems to be doing much better work, and a heck of a lot better than I can get scanning the negatives at home.  One of these days, I'll pay for some "premium" scans to see what the Hasselblad can really do, but until then, these scans are pretty good.

Here's another one at close focus with the +3 diopter, and a tighter crop below...

As you can probably tell from these pictures, I saw almost no loss in image quality when using the close-up diopters.  They're a heck of lot easier than using extension tubes too, although I'm sure I'll try that at some point as well.  It's also possible to use diopters and extension tubes at the same time, and that will make the Hassie into a true macro camera (i.e. 1:1 reproduction ratio).

To give an idea of how sharply the depth of field drops off when focusing this close, I shot this at f/11.  For subjects at ordinary distances (~6-50 ft), f/11 gives nearly infinite depth of field with an 80mm lens, but here you can see that only a single flower is in focus at f/11.  The subject was ~20 inches from the film plane.

One more shot to illustrate how shallow the depth of field is when shooting macro.  My focus point was the letter "M", and I also shot this at ~f/11.

And here are just a couple shots to see if I could make something interesting from the (admittedly) boring scenery around my apt. complex.  I doubt I've got any pullitzers here, but as always, the rendition on film is gorgeous, and the level of detail captured by the Hasselblad is pretty amazing too.

Seriously, look at all that detail!

And of course, a B&W shot of my favorite chess table to cap this post.  Thanks for reading. 

With any luck, my next post will be all about the Cherry Blossoms here in DC.  Should be a lot of fun...