Before the laser printer…, a photo by stst31415 on Flickr.

Good ideas like the pencil are things which will live nearly forever. So I decided to show my children how the sharp tip of a pencil looks like.

The problem with Macros is always the lighting. But there is a simple solution to that: With a retro adapter the DOF is limited to a 1 or 2 centimeters, so you can put smaller objects on the small softboxes you get for speedlights. The nearly have the right height and they are perfect: translucent and easy to move (to get the focus right).

In the picture above you can see how the different lights (ambient from the box below and spot from above) change the way you see the structure in the lead of the pencil. You can even see how the lead was glued into the wood…