Not strictly macro, I suppose, but magnified, certainly. If you do these a lot, you develop an incredibly steady hand. Something I obviously need some practice at.

Upset to find that my Raynox MSN-202 is not suitable for use on a full-frame sensor. Sad times.

My father in law, lucker though he is, happened upon loads of boxes of cool camera equipment a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been dying to have a rummage through these boxes since I heard about them and now I’m back with a couple of new toys! The box even contained my very first SLR camera (Minolta Dynax 500si), which was a trip down memory lane.

The main prize is a Nikon fit Tokina 60-300mm ƒ4-5.6. I’ve never relied on manual focus for regular shooting before, so this will be an education for me. Upon first use, I have incredibly shaky hands! I stacked it on three extension tubes, and it’s pretty nifty for macro. Just need to dig out my Raynox MSN-202 and we’ll be in business. Does anyone remember where I put this?

There was also a couple of mirage filter attachments and a Raynox XL 3000. I was really looking forward to the Raynox, but it seems to be only for video cameras and needs to be mounted about 3ft off the end of an SLR lens, so it’s a no-go. One day I’ll just punt on a fish-eye or something. Samyang do some cheap ones.

On to the relatively good stuff.

My new moviepeg also got delivered. On first inspection, the packaging is adorable (that’s right, I said it. Adorable) and the material they’ve used seems to be far superior to that of the iPad version. I don’t know about anyone else’s, but mine have all but petrified now and are basically useless. Post hoc ergo propter hoc though it may be, I’d say that Brendan took my comments on board. I might even go as far as to say that I’m basically the inspiration for the new material.

Charlotte used to collect these leaves, because of the ridges.

I seem to be on a closeup kick the last couple of days. I might go walking somewhere I’ve not been before tonight – there’s got to be so much of this place I’ve never seen before.

Charlotte and I realised that this weekend, we have been to the same places we went on our first two dates. If it were intentional, it would’ve been romantic.

For some reason, I’m not my jolly self today. Luckily, we have a pretty good source of cute things in the immediate vicinity to help me out. These ducks were so tame – I was crawling towards them with my camera to my face, ready to catch them before they ran (note the use of a 24-70 – my lens isn’t built for this sort of thing!), but they just stayed put. It was awesome. I carried on snapping, trying to get them to respond to me, but I guess I took it too far and they ran. Bless.

Oh yeah – obligatory dewy grass shot – I refuse to take both my flashes and an assistant with me to get this right, so this will have to do!