Fun with Macro Filters (or I Have No Idea What I'm Doing)

A little over a year ago I purchased a Samsung GX10 digital SLR camera.  All these months later and I still really don't have a clue as to how to fully use it.  I basically just aim it in the direction of what I want to shoot and hope that the picture comes out somewhat decent.  I fiddle with the settings, but that tends to do me more harm than good.  I have long since forgotten everything I learned in the one photography class that I took back in Junior High.  The camera's been very good to me, but I'd love to be able to put it to better use.

Lately I've been playing with my camera quite a bit.  Some day I'd love to take a full course on how to properly shoot digital photography, but alas, right now there's no money to do so.  And so I play and fiddle and see what I come up with.  At this point I haven't done anything too fancy.  I only have the orignal lens that I got with the camera package I bought.  About a week ago I asked a photographer friend of mine (Corey B.) to give me a couple recommendations for new lenses that I might like for my camera.  Corey gave me a few examples and I looked up their prices.  Uh... not happening any time soon!  The macro lenses are fairly expensive.  I'm going to need to save my pennies for awhile before I can splurge on one of those babies.

A day or so after Corey provided me the info, I happened to read Nancy *'s article Macro Photography. In her article she showed beautiful examples of macro photography and mentioned macro filters for digital SLR cameras.  I asked her if she thought that might be a good start for me instead of trying to save up for the actual macro lens.  Nancy was nice enough to email me through Gather and gave me good advice to check out the filters because price wise, they're a steal compared to the cost of lenses.  She also advised that I should invest in a UV filter too.  Until she mentioned that, I had completely forgotten that I had a UV filter already.  When I bought the camera package, it came with a free UV filter and a free polarizing filter.  Silly me has never used either one and the package was unopened. 

Anyway, I checked out Amazon on Nancy's recommendation and then searched eBay as well to compare.  I found a macro filter set on eBay for a couple dollars cheaper than Amazon and the seller provided FREE shipping.  The eBay seller was an actual camera store too, so I felt safe ordering.  (In the end I ordered the wrong size, whoopsie! but the customer service for the seller was amazing and they fixed the order over the phone and sent me the right size. Phew!)

The filters arrived on Saturday, but I didn't get a chance to check them out right away.  Sunday afternoon though, I took them out and went photo crazy in my yard and in the house.  Everything small suddenly became an object to photograph.  The filters came in 4 strengths that can be used alone or all together.  Of course I wanted full power and put all 4 on my camera. 

Being that I have no clue what I'm doing, I'm somewhat pleased with a few of my shots.  I thought I'd share them here and as I practice more, hopefully I'll get better and have even nicer photographs to share.

 This was the first shot I took with the macro filters.  It's of the bloom on my house plant, Sparky.  (Yes, I named my house plant... turns out Spark is a peace lily).

And then I found some leaves to photograph.  The pictures didn't turn out that great, but again, I'm just learning.

Then I had to visit my flowers.

And then I went snap happy all over the garden...

No plant was safe from my lens...

And I didn't stop with just plants.  My little garden statues were good models for me too.

It's not easy being green... but Green is my favorite color.

I went hunting for bugs, but could only find this little guy and nothing exciting.

Back to the flowers I went.

Weeds can be pretty too:

I found some random odds and ends:

A bug then found me... eek!  He landed right on my leg.

Back to the flowers to get away from creepy crawlies!

And that was my first day's adventure into macro photography.  It was fun!