wood horsetail 2012-04-28

fishy forest 2012-04-28

First try-outs with a fisheye lens in the spring forest:

Common Beech (Fagus sylvatica)

moss sporangia 2012-04-21

2 sek · f/6.3 · reverse-mounted lens at 24 mm · ISO 100

This image of moss sporangia ist my first result of photographing with a reverse-mounted lens. The advantage of this technique is great magnification: Whereas most makro lenses are limited to 1:1 without additional tools (which means that the object and its image on the sensor have the same size) reverse-mounting allows higher magnification factors, e.g. up to 3.7:1 using the EF-S 18-55 mm lens at 18 mm. Shorter focal length results in greater magnification. The picture above was taken at 24 mm with a magnification of 2.6:1.

This 100 % crop demonstrates the details which can be unveiled: The structure of cell walls becomes visible in the cap of the capsule. However, the depth-of-field is very shallow (only fractions of a millimetre) and the sharpness is limited by diffraction since the numerical aperture is about f/22.

Duck chicks 2012-04-20

Stuttgart 2012-04-20

Landtag building, seat of the parliament of the federal state

New Palace

The buildings around the market square ("Marktplatz") have were built after the Second World War in which the historical buildings had been destroyed. A view from 1881 can be found on Wikipedia.

view from the tower of the main railway station