Flowers are the jewels of spring. Colours arise everywhere, even in the most unsuspecting places. At the end of March I could spend a few hours between my home county and Maremma and keep exercising with flowers and the Meyer-Optik Görlitz Trioplan.

Even plants such as rosemary and sage, which you don't normally associate with flowers, are capable of surprises in this season.

Greater periwinkle (Vinca major) is a little precious jewel that I sometimes find in hedges or dry stone walls, floating between shadow and sun light.

Lungwort (Pulmunaria officinalis) has been another major surprise. Flowers are small, but so beautiful and even bi-coloured in many cases. For them I've tried the Trioplan with a rather long extension tube (32mm). Focusing is not easy — the depth of field is very shallow in these conditions — and the tripod was definitely required. Also, with such a long extension tube and a short working distance, focusing is better performed by slightly moving back and forth rather than with the focusing ring. I don't own a macro slider rail, but so far slightly loosening the tripod head clamp, so I can move the camera plate, has proved to work.