Macro shoot out

For the past week I have been impressed by the macro photos taken by the members in a photography forum group. Objects, plants, flowers and insects shot in macro looks lovely. At the same time it takes good patience and techniques to be able to get a good macro shot.

I was interested in taking some macro shots since it would be a great thing to venture into apart from my usual events and casual photography (and also my current passion - HDR). The only thing stopping me to start macro shooting is to get a macro lens. A good macro lens will set me back at least Rm1,500.00 and I am currently not in a spending mood. I came to know that some of the forum members used a macro attachment made by a Japanese company called Raynox and the macro attachment used is a DCR250. I managed to come across a posting selling a used unit for RM200.00 but by the time I managed to contact the seller, he told me that the unit has been booked.

Only Saturday morning I managed to find another forum member who is selling the attachment, new unit. I SMS him to check out the price and his quotation was RM260.00 where I find the price reasonable (ShaShinki is selling the unit for RM280.00). We met up at USJ and I bought the unit from him.

Reached home, I quickly attach the unit on to my lens to experiment it by shooting the plants at my house. My son was also interested in what I was doing and he also got hooked in shooting the stuff around the garden using the macro attachment.

Today (Sunday) we decided to try some macro shooting at the Butterfly park. Before that we were to the National Monument because I have never taken my son there (12 years since he was born). He was curious how the National Monument looks like. Took some shots of the monument and then we took some macro shot of the flowers at the surrounding areas of the National Monument. The shots are posted below while the bigger versions of the shots can be seen at my photo blog and also at my Flickr Album.











The we drove over to the Butterfly park. There was already some foreign tourist lining up to get their entrance tickets. I looked at the price listing and I was shocked by the cost the of the entrance ticket - Adult RM18.00 Child below 12 years -RM8.00. It will cost me a total of RM27-00 (RM1-00 for my camera) for entrance fee. I felt that the price is too expensive and I told my son, we will not go in today. Wait till me have enough practice using the macro attachment before we go back there.

We then went back home to process the photos that we have taken.