My colleague recently came back from a trip up to Cameron Highlands, and gave me a bunch of chrysanthemums which he didn't want! I didn't want them initially, but since he mentioned something on "macro shots", I thought it over ... and then took the bunch! Yeah, apart that I could give them to my mum to be placed at the altar, the flowers gave me a fine reason to take out and play around with the Raynox DCR-250 close-up lens.

Orange pompons

These chrysanthemums are not the normal ones I used to see. They came in pompons, quills, bla-bla! Rather different from the usual ones I get from the local florists/market.

All shots were taken under incandescent lighting from a 60W bulb. Mostly were lighted from the left (of the pics), slightly above the level of the flowers. Some were also lighted from the bottom with an additional light source - cool tungsten light bulb.

This was additionally lighted from the bottom.

Spider/Quills

Many were manually focused. It was rather dim in the room, and relying on the AF was quite cumbersome and frustrating under low-light. I wasn't really confident in getting them focused correctly. It's difficult to judge from the viewfinder, and even zooming-in on the LCD didn't help much. I've been deceived by my eyes once too many times LOL!!! But thank goodness, most of them turned out ok.

The tips

In black and white