Macro Zoom

Someday I'll buy you cookies.
San Francisco, California - March 2005

Last weekend, I bought a 28-80mm macro zoom lens that can marcoize down to 1:5. That's not particularly good magnification, but it's a bit better than I had already, and it wasn't a particularly expensive lens. If you notice, there's sort of a weird hazy, dreamy thing in the picture that makes it look like i kind of pulled the camera down and to the left while the shutter was open. Lots of the photos have this look to it. They're all off-kilter somehow, foggy, dreamy. I'm not saying I don't like the way they look, but I don't think I want to have a lens that's only able to take pictures with that effect.

Thing is, I don't know a whole lot about macro photography. I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. I've read that macro lenses are kind of hard to focus, and I needed to use pretty slow shutter speeds with this one, so this might be something that could be resolved with a tripod, but I don't know. I don't know if this is a problem with the lens, or with me, or if i should try to return it.

here's some more, down at flickr.com.