Well the day arrived. After searching on ebay for what had seemed an eternity, (which was in reality just a couple of months) I saw a Macro lens advertised for under £100.

It was a Vivitar 55mm macro lens and after reading as much as I could on the web about this lens I snapped it up. It was the first time I'd bought something off of ebay so I was a bit nervous about trusting a stanger and not seeing the lens in person I could have ended up with a pile of rubbish. So when it arrived I was absolutely delighted to see a mint condition macro lens.

Having never used a macro lens before I was surprised at how little DOF there was (although I'm not sure at that stage whether or not I actually knew what DOF stood for) the smallest aperture on this lens is f16.

So a with huge learning curve ahead I started shooting with the exuberance of a child on Christmas Morning here are some of the early results.

WARNING – all the following pictures are noisy (didn't know about the need for flash/light with macros to start off with) the pp is abominable (I was worse then than I am now – who'd have thought that was possible) and they aren't overly brilliant photos, but serve as an illustration. I will not be held personally responsible for any damage caused to eyesight caused by the viewing of the following images.

Before I learned about eye contact and composition.




This one must have been the 30th or so attempt - 'twas extremely difficult getting close enough. Fun though.





Discovering DOF and my 'arty farty' side.







Three grass stamen


The discovery of bokeh


My discovery of specular highlights - which would end up giving me hours of fun at the crack of dawn in the mornings




Same old story though - I wanted to get closer and more detailed - so if there is anyone that hasn't died of boredom I'll babble on about the introduction of a 2 x tele converter, the conception of the pringles tube diffuser and the addition of a cheap ring light next time.