Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Although there's nothing particularly Pennsic-ish about this photo, I did shoot it at Pennsic. (I was showing off my macro skillz for some of my camp-mates after they'd watched me photograph an insect.) And I like it enough that I couldn't wait to post it. I'm especially pleased by the reflection of the salt.

Er, yeah, that thing that folks keep saying looks like an ice cube is a grain of table salt. :-) And the blobby, round thing on the left is neither a meatball nor falafel, but a single grain of ground black pepper. They're resting on the screen of my PDA, lit from the side by a flash.

No conventional microscope involved, though the question of whether the combination of lenses I cobbled together constitutes an improvised microscope or just a scary-looking macro lens is left as an exercise for my readers. From the camera out, it was a 2x teleconverter, a 200mm lens, then a 50mm lens backwards (attached to the 200mm lens by gaffing their lens hoods together). I set the flash on 1/16th power and adjusted its brightness by sliding it slightly closer or farther away.