African Violet

[Sefirothe]

I'm not sure on the crop, I think its a bit too much green and busy? All C&C greatly desired.


african violet best by sefirothe9, on Flickr

[Shadowman]

the shot is a bit tight to trim off the edge of the other flower, can you zoom out or do a diagonal diamond shaped trim? I think your original center of focus may have been another part of the scene, I see more sharpness in the green leaves than in the flower.

[Dave Humphries]

I'm not sure on the crop, I think its a bit too much green and busy? All C&C greatly desired.


african violet best by sefirothe9, on Flickr

Hi Sharon,

To my eyes, there's something odd about the plane of focus, it almost appears diagonal - perhaps you have already done a rotation?

The two other blooms partly in shot are a bit of a distraction, especially the one lower right because it is so sharp, but I would normally using cloning, or dodging to remove/reduce such 'problems' myself.

I was about to say there's no EXIF data when I spotted the flickr link, so I went there to get it;
1/200s, f/5.6 at 55mm at iso125 (on a Nikon D3100).

This reveals a wide aperture for such a subject, giving the narrow Depth of Field.
Personally, I would be taking this at f/16 and since you used flash, unless ambient light was an issue, I would trade some shutter speed and some iso to achieve that, say iso400 and 1/60s.

Hope that helps,

[Sefirothe]

I think the focus was odd to the both of you because the one setting was set to 3D instead of a single spot. I'm still trying to figure all the menus on this thing out.

I tried for similar settings to those Dave, when I took this photo but it was a little later in the day so the ambient light was a bit different. And of course the flower itself didnt cooperate by popping up another bloom. Ah mother nature!


DSC_0035 by sefirothe9, on Flickr