Maple flowers

Maple tree outside (said to be Oregon Maple though, I’m not sure) is having flowers.

They don’t looks like flowers still, they must be.  As they produce the two-winged seed later.   And it seems they can pollinate themselves (or blown by the wind ?) as I don’t see any insect around.  —– There are many forms of life. (not only cherry is the flower.   😀

(Those photos were taken by Tamron 500 mm F8 mirror lens though, as it was done through the dusty double grazed window, the image was not sharp at all.)

Two weeks later, how they looks now.  Though, I haven’t necessary been kept watching all the process how their tangled red things changed to this.  Photo above left might be the female flower and the right might be the male — but not sure. (Yes, I was wrong)

You believe or not, the one above photo, the right one was taken by 1000 mm lens.  In fact, a x2 tele-converter was added to Tamron 500 mm lens. = Long time ago I bought this £5 converter as a joke, thinking to make it for a close-up ring by removing the optics.  But now I know, this was not a junk.   With x2 converter, F8 lens become F16, so that on DSLR’s optical view finder it become too dark to focus. (Unless we use live-view on the back screen)   But, mirror-less camera can show the amplified bright image, even focus-peaking is working ! = It’s their biggest advantage.   (still, 1000 mm lens was not suite for hand-held shot.)   😀      (Since I found their dropped flowers, I’ll show you =  You  can see them developing to the full winged seed.)  Then I remember, one of my Zeiss lens for Sony showed AF malfunction (hence, I realized that’s was why it was so cheap) I gave another look. = While making a test shot on manual focus.

The picture here was by Zeiss (Sony) SEL55F18Z (55mm) Aperture was set to F8 (about 1/100 sec, hand held) and to show the enlarged center as well — pretty good isn’t it !  (By the way, Winged Seed pod right was the same pod wrongly appeared as Male, before.  Well nobody is perfect.  😀 ) 

But, it might be too unfair to the other lens.  I did the same test by Micro Nikkor 55 mm F3.5 = this was the lens, the Nikon themselves named that “their best lens ever designed.” (Canon EF gives  no F-setting on Sony (unless use a £100 Sigma adapter)  and the others such as Contax, Pentax, Olympus, etc, I would give sometime another occasion.  😀 )  —– If we use the lens careful enough, and the camera has Hi-res sensor (Nikon D850 has 47.2 Mp / Sony A7R has 32 Mp ) they could produce pretty good image, without using a heavy tele-photo lens. (Just crop the picture.  Forget the “Purist’s brah brah kind”)  Anyway, Net is for harmless / useless info’chat or Joke.  😀

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