Conkers - a childhood favourite - now captured digitally.  These were found in a local park and were my first attempt at taking closeup shots.  In this case I dont think the casings make for very good subjects as they are a little bit brown rather than fresh and green - having said that, the actual conkers a a great colour.

I call this closeup closeup, because the images are taken with the camera within 12 inches of the subject - distance closeup I use to describe images takes from a great distance using a telephoto lens to bring the subject closer. You wont get this with a spy pen camera thats for sure.

A mushroom taken on a sunny day - here we can see that the focus wasn't quite on the step of the mushroom, so its a little blurred but on the whole I was pleased with the picture - taken from a distance of around 24 inches with the camera on a tripod down low (as you can imagine).

Here's an example of using a telephoto lens to get close up into the action.  With fireworks it goes without saying that care must be taken to protect first of all yourself, and then of course the camera.

This shot was taken of a small fountain type garden firework from around 20 feet away - at night.  At the time, I didn't have a remote control for the camera, so instead, I lit the firwork, ran back to the camera and pressed the shutter button with a 10 second timer delay.  The reason for this is that absolutely any shake on the camera during the exposure would result in the loss of the natural straight and curved lines being formed by the direction of the sparks during the exposure.