Passionflower

[outwithmycamera]

Saw this along a walking path in Richmond, Virginia. Shot using a canon eos-m and 22mm f/2.0 lense. This image is heavily cropped, and this sort of thing makes me wish I had a short macro telephoto for this camera.

[chauncey]

Chris...use a tripod, get closer, increase your depth of field. It is nice considering the crop.

[FrankMi]

Nice one Chris! Beautiful colors and delicate patterns. The ant is a nice touch. If you can't increase the DoF to get the entire blossom in focus (assuming that your goal is to do that), you could try a straight down from the top approach for a blossom of this shape. That would center the green and yellow column on the purple and white, er, thingies?

[NorthernFocus]

Nicely exposed, an interesting angle, and relatively clean BG. IMO for it to be effective the DOF should include the entire center of the bloom. Doesn't necessarily have to be the entire bloom, but only part of the center doesn't work so good.

[outwithmycamera]

Nicely exposed, an interesting angle, and relatively clean BG. IMO for it to be effective the DOF should include the entire center of the bloom.

Thanks this is a helpful observation, seeing this now I should have probably shot at f/8 rather than f/4.

As to William's comment about a tripod and getting closer, that wouldn't have helped in this case as i had plenty of shutter speed and was already about as as close as this lens will focus. That is where a longer lens would have been useful, to help fill the frame and keep the background at bay.

Here is a top down view - its abit at an oblique angle so some of the petals are a bit out of focus, and the DOF its too shallow to get the center (again). But you get the idea what that view looks like. I prefer the angle of the OP just for the different perspective.

Passionflower 2 by outwithmycameraVA, on Flickr

[Shadowman]

Nice.

[elfbob]

Chris , have you heard of stacked focus for increasing dof(depth of field)? it requires using a steady tripod & the camera set to manual with manual focus using like f/5.6 to f/8 depending on the lens(the f/ determines the dof of the individual images) you never change the camera settings only manually focus through the flowers depth making an exposure at each focus point. If you go "higher tech" you can buy an inexpensive macro focusing rail where the camera settings & focus is fixed, the camera/lens is sequentially moved along the rail at set intervals through the flowers depth with an exposure at each interval. You then feed the sequence of captured images into a stacked focus program that combines all the images into an end product image that shows sharp dof through the flower's depth. There are several commercial stacked focus programs that let you use RAW images; I personally use CombineZP which is a free shareware program that gives excellent results but only lets you use jpeg serial captures. If you need further info reply to this post & i'll give you my email

[Ken MT]

I liked the ant, did anybody notice it?

[IzzieK]

I liked the ant, did anybody notice it?

I did (raising digital hand) and in the process, I thought of David (deetheturk). He'd love this one...

Anyway, moving on...I love the original image better. Different angle is more interesting ...

[JohnRostron]

Like Robert, I thought of focus stacking. Despite what they say, it is possible to stack images taken without a tripod, but it is rather hit and miss.If you are out there without a tripod, it is always worth a try. Most focus stacking software will align images with modest amounts of displacement, rotation and scaling. Go for it!

Even without focus stacking, this is a great image!

John R

[JohnRostron]

...the purple and white, er, thingies?

Apparently, these are called Coronal filaments.

John

[DanK]

Nice image. I think the first shot has a more interesting perspective, although it does create more of a problem with DOF, and the division between the light and dark background even with the top of the flower is distracting.

As to William's comment about a tripod and getting closer, that wouldn't have helped in this case as i had plenty of shutter speed and was already about as as close as this lens will focus. That is where a longer lens would have been useful, to help fill the frame and keep the background at bay.

I think what you need is a macro lens; a longer lens as such wouldn't help. The DOF will be roughly the same, given identical framing, regardless of focal length. However, a longer length will give you more background blur, which is different. Search "background blur" on this site for a recent thread about this.

Re stacking: I do it all the time, but rarely on flowers outside. The problem isn't just that the camera may move; the problem is that the flower will move unless there is no wind. I have successfully stacked only a few flowers taken outside. If you do want to stack, you do not need a focusing rail. For this level of magnification, it is unnecessary. You can get identical results by changing the focus of the lens. Focus at the near end first (for framing), and then manually move the focus point back. if you search the site, you fill find a number of threads explaining this. In fact, while I have a very good focusing rail and stack lots of my images, I have never used the rail to get the small changes in focal point; I use it only to help position the camera for the first shot.

[Texas Dave]

I think you captured it nicely.