20060405 070.jpg

For whatever reason, this fly didn't mind my getting quite close with the camera.
I had time to change lenses (including digging the tilt lens out of the bottom of
the backpack since it wasn't in the belt bag), take some shots, discover a metering
problem, fix that problem, and take some more shots, before it flew away.

* * * * *

I was attracted by the formation of the leaves, and the opportunity (since I had
the tilt lens in the bag) to try getting up close with the tilt.

This has been cropped a little. I'm quite pleased with the DOF, but unfortunately I
didn't make a note of the f-stop number. I think it was f/5.6 but I'm not very sure.

One thing that was interesting was that the camera's metering was way off when the lens
was tilted down (at close focus distances). It must mean that somehow the metering is
affected by the tilt much more than either the image sensor or the viewfinder. I find
this very strange. I had to go to manual mode and underexpose (according to the camera's
meter) by about 3 stops to get a reasonable exposure. The problem went away when I
straightened the lens, and in fact I found I could determine a reasonable setting by
using the meter with the lens straight and then tilting down and keeping the same setting.
Tilting all the way down (at close focus, with the MFS tube extended to the max) results
in blocking out the top 25% or so of the frame; backing up the tilt to avoid this effect
meant that the exposure setting determined with the lens straight would then work without
alteration.