Asiatic lily

[DanK]

We have a bunch of these in our garden.

Since Bill said he would like technical information on these, here it is:

5D3, 100mm macro
lighting is 2 halogen floods, one bounced off an umbrella and the other diffused.
20 images, shot at f/9
Stacked in Zerene. The main stack used the DMap algorithm, which is better for preserving colors and textures. However, it is more halo-prone, so I retouched from a PMax stack where the halos were obvious.
Most editing in Lightroom, but I used photoshop to make the background fully black (that got rid of a bit of remaining halo) and to dodge and burn.

C&C always welcome. I'm wondering whether this would be better if the petals were less in focus, or in focus not as far back. I could restack without some of the images to redo it this way. Any reactions?

Thanks

Dan

[Stagecoach]

Dan, nicely captured with the artificial light and useful to read the tech spec.

My personal preference (note personal) is to not see everything in sharp focus with a work such as this and I would suggest experimenting by removing some of the rear slices, I suspect all the fwd ones are needed. This does not always work I found as at times the transition between the OOF and in focus is too drastic and looks unnatural which I suspect is determined by the apertures that have been used.

Grahame

[FrankMi]

Flowers can be sharp or soft and very beautiful either way Dan. Sometimes it is just a personal preference. My preference is for sharp when the background is dynamic like this 'blackground' and softer with appropriate bokeh when the background is natural.

I really nice composition focusing on the pistils and stamen.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[ST1]

Very nice work Dan 👍

[IzzieK]

I like the overall look of it but prefer that some of the areas at the back be a little bit blurred...Good job.

[DanK]

Thanks, all. With images of this kind, there are a couple of different ways to blur the background in the stacking process. A nonselective one is simply to exclude the rearmost images from the stack. Another is to take advantage of Zerene's retouching tool and paint from the front-most image (which has the back out of focus) onto areas in the background. However, after thinking about it some, I think I will leave it in this case. (My wife, who grew the flower, also voted in favor of keeping all the detail.)

[DigitalScape]

Beatiful image and flower, Dan - I am in favor of all in focus (as is).

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi Dan,

so you use one method to stack for colours and then another to reduce the halo?? and then what does zerene the merge the 2?

[DanK]

Hi Dan,

so you use one method to stack for colours and then another to reduce the halo?? and then what does zerene the merge the 2?

Mark,

each of the two stacking algorithms Zerene includes has strengths and weaknesses. DMap does better at retaining color and texture, and it is a bit less prone to false specular highlights, but it is much more prone to haloing when two surfaces that are adjacent in the image are distant front to back. PMax is faster, preserves a bit more detail, and is much less prone to haloing. Zerene lets you retouch from any image in the stack, or from another composite. So I stacked both ways. I then retouched from the PMax stacked to the Dmap stacked image in the areas where there were halos. this is very easy, once you get the hang of it, and it is one of the several reasons I use Zerene for all of my focus stacking.

If the flower is shallower, with less front-to-back distance along edges, DMap often works fine, without the need to retouch from a PMax composite. Conversely, some images generate so much haloing that I just use PMax alone. You get a feel for this, but it is also easy to do both and look. In fact, Zerene offers one menu choice that will align and stack all images with both methods.

Dan

[chauncey]

Until you start to play with them, you don't realize the potential options...here's one I did with a stack
then did some erasing. Just the sexy stuff

[deetheturk]

Beautiful capture Dan, I like as is

[bnnrcn]

Hi Dan, very nice image, I like it as is

[DanK]

thanks, all

[ajsmith]

Beautiful, love the light, color and sharpness of the photo.