366 Days of 2012, Day 189 - Recursion

Visual recursion is something some of us have experienced by pointing a video camera at its own monitor. That seemingly infinite diminishing set of images within images.

I never expected the same thing when I set about to photograph the aperture of my lens using the lens itself. I initially set up with the lens focused on its own nodal point, the aperture blades. It was a compromise between depth of field and a pleasing visual position for the blades to be in. (I have never heard of anyone ever setting the aperture for this reason!). On taking a few test images I noticed the reflection of the camera body off the camera's reflective CMOS sensor. I thought COOL!

Getting the camera body, as reflected off the CMOS sensor, in focus simply came down to trial and error as I simply could not get enough light to preview manual focus.

Here's the end result, 'Recursion', I hope you like it.

Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 189 - Recursion'. 20s f/6.3 ISO-320 100mm macro