Macro Monday 14, gold and red

Calgary has been having amazing weather lately, so it's been a little tough to hunker down in the basement doing macro shots. But last night I was sort of stirring around after it got dark, and decided the time had come for macro. 

 In real life, those rectangular bits of design in the middle of the knot work are about 1 mm x 2 mm. In this first one, on screen in Lightroom without any cropping, it's just under 5 cm x 10 cm, or 2" x 4" for those stuck in an old fashioned measurement system. I'm not sure what mag this is, probably about 3.

In this one a bit closer, on screen it's about 9 cm x 17 cm, or 3.5" x 7". What's interesting to me is all the scratches. You don't see them in real life, unless you look really closely. Then again, it's 14 ct gold so it's not that hard, and I've worn it every day for about 30 years. When we first married I had a job working with my hands, putting them in tight places and pulling on wrenches and stuff, so I didn't want to be wearing a ring. This is about 5x.

I was surprised how hard it was to have the gold colour come up on screen. I had to play with the lighting a bit, and get everything just so.

That last one, when I blow up Lightroom to 1:1, that bar is about 16 cm x 31 cm, and the scratches are almost like artwork. Maybe I should tweak the angle that I mount it at, put on the extension tubes, and have another go at it, maybe making it into an abstract that takes up the full screen. Hmmm.

I always think of eyeglasses as a delicate thing because I've broken so many of them over the years. But this looks sturdy, doesn't it?

All along, I had no idea I'd been displaying some other guy's name on my glasses. Good thing I never lost them. Those white flecks aren't scratches, they're salt. These are the glasses I wear on my bike.

I'd been shooting another ball point pen, but it didn't show up well, so I got this one. Seeing the red come up on screen made me happy! Love that red, and red is often difficult for cameras. That ball is under a mm in diameter, on screen in Lightroom, at 1:1, it's about 11 cm in diameter. That was at 5x mag, with 68 mm of extension tube.