Seed Head

[Black Pearl]

As you can see below the setup looked a little slap-dash but the principals and techniques involved were solid enough:
One of my wireless Neewer flashguns either side dialled down to 1/128th power and fiddled about with until I got the shaping I wanted - they were triggered with the Fuji flash on the camera.
An old presenter that I use for work propped up behind the seed head (which is bunged into a socket set with the right size hole to grip the stem) and back enough to fall out of the flash range to keep it black.
My 60mm f2.4 macro with a 16mm extension tube mounted on the Fuji.
Manual exposure - I don't have a meter so it was all done by eye - and manual focus set via the focus peaking.
I started at the closet focus point and kept taking pictures with a small focus shift between until I went beyond the furthest point of the seed head - turned out to be 18 frames.
I was shooting jpeg as its quicker to process and I didn't need to fiddle with the files as I was controlling the lighting so they were loaded directly into HeliconFocus and stacked using the default Method A.
Whipped the resulting tiff over to Photoshop CC to downsample then added a little output sharpening for the web and thats it. Didn't adjust the image, haven't set the black point (which is a little out if you look very, very closely) just trying to keep it simple

[Stagecoach]

It's all down to the quality of those diffusers on the flashes

Seriously Robin that's an excellent result.

[DanK]

Truly excellent. interesting lighting, and a good stack.

Ironically, I had decided to try something similar yesterday. I got as far as setting up my macro gear but hadn't yet picked a dandelion. I can't decide whether your excellent image inspires me to do it or takes the wind out of my sails!

I do have one suggestion for you. I do a lot of photos of flowers and seeds against a black background, and it is almost impossible to keep light off the background. Yours is close to true black, but not quite. With an image like this, it takes only seconds to make it true black. My drill in photoshop is this:

--select the black by color range
--fiddle with the fuzziness range if necessary to get the selection right. I had it set to 59 when I tried this with your image, and it worked fine without any fiddling.
--open a levels adjustment layer, which will put that selection on as a mask, with white in the areas that are nearly black in the image.
--bring the midpoint all the way to the right, which will convert that area to full black.

This doesn't work as easily if there are some really dark areas within the image, but it works well with an image like this one.

[Davejl]

Very impressive.

[Black Pearl]

Thanks.

Good tip dan, I would have just given the left slider in levels a shove then balanced it with a shove to the middle one :-)


I could have done that before posting a ding I'd have shot raw I could have pulled back the highlights a little but I just wanted to see how close I could get with a bit of old fashioned groundwork.

[Black Pearl]

It's all down to the quality of those diffusers on the flashes

Seriously Robin that's an excellent result.

Gotta say I'm mighty impressed with those guns which cost me about £55 ($80) for the pair. They don't offer TTL but they do have slaves so can be fired remotely, came with the diffuser, a stand and a case plus they have audio feedback and a smashin' big lighty-up screen.

[xpatUSA]

Robin, I wish I had your patience!

Great job.

[bnnrcn]

Excellent shot Robin

[Wavelength]

Superb image; great effort; really well done

[Black Pearl]

Thanks all

Robin, I wish I had your patience!

Great job.

Our weather is variable at best and I'm easily bored if I can't get out with the camera every day

[IzzieK]

Excellent shot, Robin...I am still trying to find a weed like so to photograph. I think Bill had mown them all this week. I swore I saw one near....nevermind! The centre of this looks like a golf ball...very sharp at 18 stack...thanks for sharing your method.

[Kaye Leggett]

Izzie - you want weeds......welcome to my garden !

Robin - great shot and loved the set up photo....it looks like the flash 'guns' could blow those seeds away and destroy your careful placing

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Dave A]

Nicely done image, really stands out.

Dave

[Black Pearl]

Thanks

You're all jealous of my fantastic studio aren't you?

[rpcrowe]

Really nice capture...

[IzzieK]

Izzie - you want weeds......welcome to my garden !

You made me laughed so hard I think I woke my husband up. I was actually tending to weed removable in my garden patch this morning. Four more to go...but still no sight of any dandelion seed.