Ranan Samanya Photography

I am bored with the usual stuff. So I set up my 50mm f/1.8 II nifty-fifty with a Nikkor +1 close-up filter and a Cokin +2 close-up filter. Yes, you have guessed it right: I took the Nikkor filter from my father’s drawer, he was using it with a Nikkormat body loooong time ago. And Cokin was my favorite (and cheap) creative filter system back in the early eighties.

And then here’s another reason I love my old Cullmann tripod so much (I bet many -if not all- of you who have seen me carrying the tripod have not seen this feature in action): I removed the main pole out of the tripod, and sticked it in again upside down from below for macro position. Ain’t that cool! I’m lucky the nifty-fifty is as light as a feather, otherwise my tripod’s ballhead will not be able to withstand the weight.

Setting up the flash was a bit tricky, as mounting it on the camera was my only option. I ended up taking a piece from my daughter’s old cardboard house to aid the bounce.

Here’s the final product. I failed to remove that small portion of shadow, and even adding a side paper reflector didn’t help much and in fact it was reducing the texture details of the claw, so I just let that shadow be part of the frame. Manual focus, manual mode, manual flash setting.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and have a good evening!