Practicing the Art: Red Hibiscus Anthers 1x1 mag ~ Studio

[JBW]

I may have damaged these anthers when I plucked the flower. Or they may have been damaged in the wind and rain.

ISO 100 ~ Shutter Speed Fifteen s. ~ F/14 ~ Well Diffused & Low Powered Light ~ Sony Alpha a58 ~ Tamron 90mm 272E

[Shadowman]

Brian,

This might be one of those images where stepping back is in order, either totally isolate the head of the stigma or show a format of the whole pistil. Nice effort.

[JBW]

Brian,

This might be one of those images where stepping back is in order, either totally isolate the head of the stigma or show a format of the whole pistil. Nice effort.

As the title says: Practicing. I have been trying for a decent shot like this for a while. This was the best at 1x1 but i'm not sure it works. Totally isolating leaves me an exceptionally small sized shot.

It might be time to consider going to 1.5 or 2x mag.

[Cogito]

It might be time to consider going to 1.5 or 2x mag.

Possibly, there's too much out of focus in this image. I don't think trying additional magnification would help?

[Manfred M]

Brain - I'm with Tony on this one. There is simply not enough in-focus on this image for it to work well.

[JBW]

Brain - I'm with Tony on this one. There is simply not enough in-focus on this image for it to work well.

Manfred & Tony, you're right. The trouble is that F/14 or 16 is as high an F/ # as I can go without losing iq. To get more in focus I need to back up a bit and lose the detail. That's okay. It's a p[pretty flower. I am just curious how much spot on detail I can achieve with the gear I've got.

And while i have your attention Manfred. I've tried now for 2 days to dl a trial version of Affinity Photo with no luck.
B.

Seems that I have finally run up against a limiting reality with my Tamron 90mm.

[Manfred M]

Manfred & Tony, you're right. The trouble is that F/14 or 16 is as high an F/ # as I can go without losing iq. To get more in focus I need to back up a bit and lose the detail. That's okay. It's a p[pretty flower. I am just curious how much spot on detail I can achieve with the gear I've got.

I think you know the answer to this one; you've run into the limits of what your tool can accomplish. I suspect focus stacking is the likely solution here, but as I am not a macro photographer, I can't offer any advice on that.

And while i have your attention Manfred. I've tried now for 2 days to dl a trial version of Affinity Photo with no luck.

It must be a problem at your end. I just managed to download it a minute ago.

[JBW]

I think you know the answer to this one; you've run into the limits of what your tool can accomplish. I suspect focus stacking is the likely solution here, but as I am not a macro photographer, I can't offer any advice on that.



It must be a problem at your end. I just managed to download it a minute ago.

must be.

[DanK]

It might be time to consider going to 1.5 or 2x mag.

That would only make the out-of-focus problem worse.

Seems that I have finally run up against a limiting reality with my Tamron 90mm.

No, this is not an equipment issue. It's a question of technique: how to deal with the very shallow DOF in macro photography. Changing equipment won't change the problem.

There really aren't many ways to deal with this. One is to position the subject as close to parallel to the sensor as you can, minimizing the DOF you need. A second is to stack. Photos like this are ideal for stacking because flowers, unlike bugs, stay more or less in one place. A third, which I generally don't do, is step back and then crop. There was a thread about this some time ago. I mistakenly thought this wouldn't help, but because of what others wrote, I tested it, and it does work. Here is an original shot, no cropping:



Here is another, for which I stepped back and then cropped to make the image the same size with respect to the frame:



Of course, you lose pixels and detail doing this, but if you are only displaying on the web, you can lose quite a bit before it matters.