Cuckoo flower

[billtils]

These are sprouting in fields and grass roadside verges here and in other parts of the UK just now. The plant is Cardamine pratensis, or more commonly, the Cuckoo flower because it appears about the same time as the arrival of the migrant Cuckoo bird. In some parts of Scotland it is also called the May flower and associated with the saying "Ne'er cast a cloot 'til the May be oot" which translates as "keep wearing your winter clothing until the Mayflower appears" (there is a more common version that goes " ... May be ...", referring to the Month).

The first image was taken unstacked with the 24-85mm lens at its maximum zoom, The flowers are approximately 8mm across.





Unfortunately the flower did not last long in the water, and the second image is of a dried and pressed head from the sprig, taken with the 50mm prime + 36mm tube, focused via tethering in CaptureOne, and processed in Zerene.





I did try a single petal with a different tube combo to get maximum magnification, but I need a bit more practice at that level ...

[Wavelength]

The close up is really awesome; i would like to have a bit more darkening of flower in the first image the back ground is a bit too bright

[billtils]

Thanks Nanda

It was deliberately exposed to create a high key effect, shot against an LED light panel.

[xpatUSA]

It was deliberately exposed to create a high key effect, shot against an LED light panel.

Bill, I like the effect which is reminiscent of an old book illustration (bottle neck notwithstanding).

Unfortunately the background is a little bright on my monitor (109 cd/m2 says the Gossen) so, if it were my image, I would likely darken it a tad and increase the flower micro-contrast too. No criticism intended.

P.S. I dropped my monitor to 88 cd/m2 and it looks mo' better ...

[DanK]

Very nice shots.

I've been thinking about getting an LED lightbox for this purpose. What do you have, and are you satisfied with it?

I agree with Ted: I would cool it down a little, and more important, I would add more contrast and microcontrast to the flowers.

Thanks

Dan

[billtils]

Bill, I like the effect which is reminiscent of an old book illustration (bottle neck notwithstanding).

Unfortunately the background is a little bright on my monitor (109 cd/m2 says the Gossen) so, if it were my image, I would likely darken it a tad and increase the flower micro-contrast too. No criticism intended.

P.S. I dropped my monitor to 88 cd/m2 and it looks mo' better ...

Thanks for the feedback Ted - much appreciated.

My monitor is at 90cd/m2, there were no exposure warnings in LR or PS, and as I mentioned in the reply to Nanda I was deliberately looking at a high key effect and happy with the result in that regard. Looking again though, I completely agree with what you say about increasing the micro-contrast.

I used the same panel for the whole flower and the pressed flower macro versions; for the former the panel was at the brightest of its 3 options but at the lowest for the macro (where the flower was laid directly on the panel surface).

I see Dan agrees with you on both counts though!

Cheers

Bill

[billtils]

Very nice shots.

I've been thinking about getting an LED lightbox for this purpose. What do you have, and are you satisfied with it?

I agree with Ted: I would cool it down a little, and more important, I would add more contrast and microcontrast to the flowers.

Thanks

Dan

Thanks Dan

The panel is a Photolux A3 LED. Don't know if this is a global brand or model designation, but you can check what limited info there is on the UK version here. I purchased it primarily for pressed flower macro shots, but a friend who does a lot of high key flower shots uses the same panel as the background. It has 3 light intensity settings but no info on what they are other than that the light is 5600K, and in answer to your question, yes I am very satisfied with it but I'm new to these so that should not be taken as expert advice .

Bill

[DanK]

Bill,

Thanks. That one isn't at B&H, so it's probably not easily found on this side of the pond.

Most of them tell you the color temperature, but that doesn't concern me because it's easy to change in postprocessing. What does concern me is color accuracy, because inaccuracies are often very hard to fix. I'm looking for one that has CRI and R9 values of 95 or so. I'll do some hunting.

BTW, I recently hung up a new print of a fuchsia in a bathroom. A day or two later, I noticed that some of the colors were really off, and my first reaction was that something was wrong in my printing workflow. Then I remembered that the bulbs in that room were cheap, CRI 80 bulbs. (When I bought them a few years ago, I couldn't find better A19 bulbs in the 450 lumens range.) So, I carried the print one room over, where the lights are all high-quality Soraa LEDs. The colors were just fine.

Dan