I am all about good deals! I decided to try out a macro close-up lens.  The close-up lenses magnify 10x.  This nifty little tool just screws onto your lens and you are good to go!  I found one at Adorama for $24.95! Whoo hoo! I figured that, hey, it’s not too high of an investment if I decide that I didn’t like it.  At least I’d be out only $25 compared to a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro at a price of  $600.  When my close-up lens came in the mail yesterday I was really excited and just couldn’t wait to try it out!  I had just bought some fresh apples earlier that afternoon, so I decided to use those since I liked the red and green complimentary colors together.  I added my wedding ring set to it and bam! I fell in love with this attachment!

I liked the image that I shot yesterday evening, but there were some things that were errrking me… First of all, the lighting was pretty dark as I was shooting this at 8:00 pm, and the sun was on the opposite side of the house from the window I was shooting by.  I had an off-camera flash going, but because the ambient light was so dark, the artificial light ended up being more dominant.  Another thing that bothered me was the glare on the center stone from the angle I was shooting it.  So this morning I woke up and reshot it.  This time I added a little *mist* to it!  I love the lighting much better from this morning as I had more natural light, compared to the artificial light from last night’s shooting… What do you think?

If you think you might want to try out a macro close-up lens, the link below will take you to the one that I bought from Adorama.  It’s a Nisha 52mm 10x Macro Close-Up Lens that I attached to my Canon 40mm 2.8 prime lens. The images you see below are slightly cropped for compositional purposes.  CLICK HERE —> http://www.adorama.com/MC10X52.html

ISO 1600 | 40mm | f/5.6 | 1/60
Natural Window Light to the left (morning) + Off-Camera Flash to the right: 1/64 power, ~1 ft. distance

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This is the shot I got last night.  I like the sharpness of it, but from that angle I was getting that ugly glare on the center stone…
ISO 1000 | 40mm | f/5.0 | 1/20
Natural Window Light to the left (evening) + On-Camera flash: 1/32 power