Zeiss 100mm f/2 Makro Classic Lens Sample Pictures

I frequently drive different routes as I go about the daily routine. This particular route turned up a beautiful field of wild mustard. I setup and began capturing images - with a clear blue sky. The longer I shot, the more the clouds contributed to my images. This was one of my favorites from the session.
 
Note that just because the name of the lens includes "Macro" (or "Makro") in it, usually does not mean it can only be used for close-up photography.

A yellow daffodil is ready to burst into a beautiful flower. The close focus distance coupled with a 100mm focal length and an f/2 aperture results in a shallow DOF (Depth of Field) and a strongly blurred background.
 
I positioned the camera so that the flower and its stem form a smoothly curving line through the image. That line's intersection with the border occurs at the point of its strongest blur.

The Botanical Tulip is a great subject - except for the fact that it promptly closes tightly when cut and brought into the studio (even when immediate placed in a water tube). Upon shooting some images of the still-beautiful closed tulip, the studio strobes apparently caused it to open somewhat - exposing the amazing color inside.

This picture is super-easy to create. Put the camera on a tripod, add a sheet of printer paper and wirelessly fire a remote flash being handheld above the egg.

The Zeiss ZE 100 on a solid tripod setup captures a night image of the New York City skyline. Hamilton Park in Weehawken, NJ is a great location for photographing the city - or for portraits using the city as a background.

A white sweep (an Elinchrom shooting table in this example) lit brightly by a strobe gives a blown-out white background. This background is ideal for a huge array of subjects including this large purple and white iris in a vase.

This Blue Jay had a navigational problem and spent a short amount of time recovering from an impact.
 
The reflection in the jay's eye clearly gives away the lighting source for this shot - a ring flash. The Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX Ring Flash to be specific. A lens-mounted macro flash makes it easy to chase your subjects with action-stopping lighting instantly ready.

The OOF (Out of Focus) foliage of the Fernleaf Peony provide a nice background for the beautiful flower. An f/4 aperture allows much of the flower to be in focus and the foliage to be identifiable-but-blurred at this focus distance. Lighting is from a partially cloud-obscured setting sun.

A pair of daffodils appear ready to burst into bloom. Having an f/2 aperture available to completely blur the background makes the appearance of the actual background less important - less distracting.

It is very easy to create a background for macro subjects - especially when shooting them indoors. This particular background is a small piece of lightly-patterned card stock (craft paper) available at most craft stores (such as Michaels). Use the interior designer in you to select image backgrounds that match the decor of the room or other background the picture will ultimately be displayed in.
 
Lighting for this shot came from a cloudy sky through a bathroom skylight.

To create a white background (without using Photoshop to do so), light the background separately from the subject. This shot was taken in my studio with an overhead strobe causing the white shooting table background to be completely blown. A large softbox provides the subject lighting.

Camera settings for many images represent a compromise. In this shot, the f/16 aperture adds a little softening of the image due to diffraction, but still does not render the entire depth of "field" (pun intended) completely sharp. The front-most flowers are slightly out of focus. Using f/22 would have meant more softening of the entire image and a longer exposure (subject motion due to wind was already an issue) or a higher ISO setting (which would make more noise visible - especially in the sky).

One of the challenges of shooting with a very shallow DOF is determining where the plane of sharp focus should lie. The stem of the selected flower was my choice for this shot. The rest of the flower and background then become blurs of color.

A house fly sitting on glass provides an opportunity for a photo from a unique perspective. This image was cropped due to the .5x maximum magnification of this lens not allowing the fly to be rendered large enough in the frame.

With the unqiue situation of being able to get very close to a Blue Jay, I was looking for equally unique compositions of the Blue Jay.

The Christmas Cactus is not much to look at for most of the year, but the annual flowers offer great photo oppportunities.