Trillium Bud

[ktuli]

At least it isn't another tulip...



C&C is very much appreciated. Please don't hold back... I'm actually wanting to find things wrong with it...

Thanks!

- Bill

[jeeperman]

It I think suffers from a little shallow DOF. I would have like the leaves to to have shown a little deeper into the shot. Is interesting though.

[ktuli]

Paul,

Thanks for the comment. I debate about the DoF... the reason I used that shallow DoF was because I wanted the focus to remain on the tips of the leaves and top of the bud. If I had used a deeper DoF, then the leaf to the left would have acquired more detail and may possibly have taken more of the viewer's attention. Since the other elements are more vertically oriented, they probably wouldn't have benefited as much from the deeper DoF. I suppose I should have shot both to confirm that, but alas I did not.

Thanks again for looking and commenting.

- Bill

[Donald]

Thanks for the comment. I debate about the DoF... the reason I used that shallow DoF was because I wanted the focus to remain on the tips of the leaves and top of the bud.

Point taken Bill. And I think the idea is excellent.

But I wonder if, because the tip of that left-hand (as we look at it) leaf is so far away from the top of the bud and the tips of the other leaves, comparatively speaking, whether the out-of-focus gap between the in-focus bud and the in-focus tip, actually attracts more attention to it (the left-hand tip) than would otherwise be the case. If it had been as vertical and therefore as close to the tip as the other two, your concept might have worked even better than it has.

[ktuli]

Donald,

Very good point. So a bit more DoF would have tied it all together into one single area of "in focus" with the rest being that nice soft bokeh. Instead, my selection of the shallowe DoF causes there to be that floating point of focus, causing the viewers' eyes to drift.

Very interesting. Thanks for clarifying.

It is a real shame I won't be likely to be able to reshoot this until next spring!

- Bill

[rob marshall]

I'm a little puzzled by this. You shot at f/11 on 100mm. I'm surprised so little of it is out of focus, and you seem to have a good bokeh for those settings. How far was the lens from the subject. It's an attractive composition, but it just needs a little more focus.

[ktuli]

I'm a little puzzled by this. You shot at f/11 on 100mm. I'm surprised so little of it is out of focus, and you seem to have a good bokeh for those settings. How far was the lens from the subject. It's an attractive composition, but it just needs a little more focus.

I believe (and the exif reinforces it) that I was right up against the minimum focusing distance of 0.3m. Man I love that lens!

- Bill

[ktuli]

Well - as I said in my P52 thread, I went shooting trillium about a year ago, and as you can see from the discussion above, I wanted to retry this shot. Unfortunately, I only had a rough memory of the shot above, and so I didn't do such a great job of reproducing it... nor do I think I did a great job of fixing the lack of DoF I had last year...

What do you think?



My thanks to Mike (KTHXBAI) for the glycerin-water mix that I was able to use to give that 'just after the rain' look.

- Bill