Did you ever want to create one of these gigantic macros without cropping your pictures? It is only a question of time until you find mentions of a retro adapter. A retro adapter is a adapter attached to your lens so you can use it the other way around. The adapter fits the end where you use to screw your filters onto. I have a protector for the now open end of the lens.

The principal which comes to use is that…   People who know me, expect at least 1460 words of scientific conundrums and several links to wikipedia and wolfram. Not here! It works. This is all that matters. So I started to have a look at the tips of my beloved aquarel  pencils. They look like this:

Do you see the problem? The highlights are blown out, because I had the problem with the lighting. You can see the harsh shadows due to the additional light of a fenix LD20 in burst mode. What you also see is the very shallow DOF (see also Two acronyms in photography you should know). So you can imagine the following: Me, trying to focus on the tips of the pencils holding the camera with both hands, trying hard not to breath andgiving instructions to the very patient woman in my life. Please higher my dear, to the right, more, less,….  I bet her secret middle name is patience.

So I searched the web and tried to find the solution for the shallow DOF and here it is:

How to change the aperture with the retroadapter on

In the example I used an 18-55mm with a retro adapter from Traumflieger (EUR 50,-). You start by just putting it on the camera. Put the camera in aperture priority mode, choose a smaller aperture and hold the depth of field preview button (in german it is the Abblendtaste), which is the small button between the grip and the bottom of the lens. Did you find it?

Now release the lens without letting loose the DOF preview button. The aperture does not snap back and you have an increased DOF.

Now we get back to where we started: Even more light is needed  to take a picture of the scene, but the DOF is definitely better. I took a picture of my Panama.

And what you see now is: Still a bit shaky. So I definitely have to use a tripod. But this is another story.