[matthew]

Okay, this is just silly:

I was puttering around last weekend, and took this shot because I wanted to play around with the lines. I never expected anything from it, but it was an opportunity to learn more about the metering and highlight range of the camera.



I was using the Nikon 50/1.4G at f/5.6. This is a pretty good lens, but it's not a macro, and it's not famous for corner-to-corner sharpness. It was also near its minimum-focusing distance. The distance across the frame, left-to-right, is about 30cm or so.

Then I brought it up to 100% on-screen, intending to clone out some dirt.

Look closer:



This is a gnat, a tiny anonymous bug smaller than a mosquito. The blown-up image is actually a 200% enlargement over the original pixels; I like the way that even the shadows of its little legs are visible. To find this bug in the original image, look toward the middle of the large shard at the top-right of the frame.

And to think that the D800E has even more resolving power…