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This Dandelion represents my first serious attempt at macro photography. I selected something not too challenging and abundant in my infrequently mown lawn. initial attempts to photograph at any magnification over 2x were thwarted by the wind. What I needed was a photographic laboratory; - enter the kitchen.

The kitchen solved the wind problem, but now lighting was an issue. it didn't help that when magnifying more then 3x I couldn't actually see the subject to focus, there just wasn't enough light for the job. Enter the Quantum T5d flashgun. I mounted (if you can call it that) the flash gun over the back of a chair as the tripod was in use. This was the first time I used the strobe function. This pulses light at 50 Hz for about 2 seconds, enough to manually focus the subject.

After quite a bit of trial and error with the flash power we landed these images.

• Image 1 was taken with my bread and butter Canon 28-136mm IS lens (I use this for just about everything). This lens was used because at the lowest setting, the macro lens will fill the width of a frame with a 12mm subject.
• Images 2-5 were taken with the Canon MP-E 65mm lens. The second image is at minimum magnification (1x) and the last ones are at 5x magnification.

The last two images show the set up.