These wilting roses were in a vase on our dining room table and since I didn’t plan to go out that day (it was gloomy, cold and I was feeling lazy) I decided to take some pictures. It turned out to be more difficult than I thought.

I was using a legacy Canon FD 100mm f4 macro lens on my NEX-5n. I think it’s the only lens that goes to f32! Trying to fill the frame I had to get quite close and even at f32 the depth of field was very narrow. I took quite a few pictures. The first few managed to get the nearer flower in focus, but the more distant one was out of focus. The next batch were the opposite: the rear flower was in focus but the other was not. Fiddling with the focus I managed to produce this picture, which looking at it again fails because neither flower is really in focus.

The other thing this lens pointed out is the amount of dust on the NEX sensor. I usually find I’m shooting around f5.6-f8 and I’ve noticed in the past that if I go up to f16 I see a couple of spots, usually in flat bright areas like the sky. This time I was using a lens at f32 and boy did I see a lot of dust spots. I really have to do something about cleaning the sensor!