Practicing the craft ~ specific points of focus C&C P&TY

[JBW]

[ionian]

Brian - for me, this one needed a deeper depth of field or a clearer contrast between what you want the eye to focus on and what you want to melt into the background. Your in-focus areas are very similar to your out of focus areas, and I can't decide why I would want to look at only part of the bloom (if that makes sense).

I suspect this may be one of those images that would work well with focus stacking, or going for a deep depth of field and then dialing in the lens blur in post, if you feel it needs it.

[Shadowman]

This capture might result in difficult print, the red is a bit too dazzling, for online viewing not as much of a worry.

[Wavelength]

Good

[NorthernFocus]

I like it, Brian. A few years ago this would have been considered a nice flow close-up. Nowadays everyone has become accustomed to focus stacked images with the entire bloom in focus and a nice BG bokeh. With the gear you have and a single image this is quite good. The sharp line formed by the dark stalk at top/right is distracting. Moving the stalk prior to the shot or shooting from a slightly different angle would have been preferable. Or dealing with it in PP.

Overall a nice effort.

[Geoff F]

You have the foreground nicely focused here, Brian, and that is the main thing. Maybe this would have been a good subject for stacking to get the whole flower sharp but this image is quite acceptable to me.

[JBW]

Same plant different flower. Better? Is there some free software for stacking that I could try?

[JBW]

This capture might result in difficult print, the red is a bit too dazzling, for online viewing not as much of a worry.

it is a very very red flower. And my printer is busted.

[Geoff F]

I use the stacking option with Adobe CC, Brian. Zerene has a free 30 day trial offer and I did try it before eventually signing up with CC.

http://zerenesystems.com/cms/stacker

My thoughts on that software were that it did a good job but needed a little bit more messing around than CC. It meant getting your images fairly good then saving as a Tiff before uploading all layers into a stack for processing.

With CC it is easy to simply part process my Raw files in ACR then transfer to the CC editing window with just one action and drag the files directly into a stack. But you have Gimp so the Tiff route should work OK for you.

Other software which I have tried in the past includes Combine ZP and Helicon Focus but I don't currently know about their effectiveness or any cost. When I tried them, some time ago, I couldn't make much progress but a lot has changed since then so it may be worth having a look.

There was something else which appeared quite recently but I can't remember the name.

Each software programme has its followers so I expect somebody else can offer extra advice.

[bnnrcn]

The second image looks much better with better light and the blurred BG Brian