Macro Dog

"so many pictures of me?!"

Our family sausage dog Frank is a ready photographic treasure chest. He is always doing something funny, even when he is sleeping! Most of the photos that I've taken of him are portraits or full length (not easy) body shots, and one day I realised that macro pictures of him were something that I had not tried yet. I was lucky to have the Tamron adaptail 35-80mm f2.8-3.8 lens, it was something my Dad bought during the film-era which I managed to fit onto my Panasonic G2 with the help of an adapter I got off Ebay (for $24!). The lens has a pretty useful Macro function, which basically let's me go really close to Frank and focus on his nose, paws...etc

Frank, having mostly black fur, can be very difficult to focus the lens on. Everything is just so dark through the viewfinder/LCD, and when you can see him, you have to look for individual strands of fur! So useful "focus points" on him include his brown patches (eyebrows, paws etc.) most of these photos required long exposures ranging from 5-20 plus seconds. The camera was placed on the floor and a 2-second timer was used. Him moving was another issue, so I had to catch him when he was very sleepy. His nose is actually very mobile, his nostrils can go to almost a right angle with his snout!

His paw pads are amazingly bouncy. If you squeeze them (gently) the pads splay apart then bounce back together again. I didn't notice the fur he had in between his paw pads before this.

Whiskers. The Tamron lens produced very nice images despite being at least 20 years old.

Tail. Hope you enjoyed the pictures, more coming soon!

-Mike