Three Generation of Morning Glory

[Round Tuit]

I seem to be coming out of my photographic slump.



Comments always welcomed

[Geoff F]

I like it but perhaps just a fraction on the dark side?

[Round Tuit]

I like it but perhaps just a fraction on the dark side?

Hi Geoff,
I'm glad this web site finally worked. Thanks for your comment. I have decided to slightly boost the mid tones

[DanK]

Nicely composed.

This will give me a bit of a kick in the rear. We moved recently, and it has been an unusually slow move because the new house has very little storage and needed a lot of work. One of the things still remaining to be done is to clear out the area in the basement where my table for photographing flowers now sits. Soon, I hope.

[Round Tuit]

Nicely composed.

This will give me a bit of a kick in the rear. We moved recently, and it has been an unusually slow move because the new house has very little storage and needed a lot of work. One of the things still remaining to be done is to clear out the area in the basement where my table for photographing flowers now sits. Soon, I hope.

Thanks Dan. I am pleased with the way the composition turned out although I am still debating whether I want to keep the neck of the vase in the picture or crop it out. It was also challenging technically because I needed a 65 shots focus stack to cover the five or so inches from the front to the back. This of course created a lot of ghosting. I must say that I truly appreciated the excellent editing capabilities of Zerene Stacker. It also convinced me to get Helicon Focus to control the camera when taking the stack!

I can also empathize with you on the pain of moving having done it 14 times in 26 years when I was working. The one piece of advice that I can offer is: Settle in your new place as quickly as you can. It is hard to enjoy life in a partially completed move.
Good luck

[DanK]

Thanks Dan. I am pleased with the way the composition turned out although I am still debating whether I want to keep the neck of the vase in the picture or crop it out. It was also challenging technically because I needed a 65 shots focus stack to cover the five or so inches from the front to the back. This of course created a lot of ghosting. I must say that I truly appreciated the excellent editing capabilities of Zerene Stacker. It also convinced me to get Helicon Focus to control the camera when taking the stack!

I can also empathize with you on the pain of moving having done it 14 times in 26 years when I was working. The one piece of advice that I can offer is: Settle in your new place as quickly as you can. It is hard to enjoy life in a partially completed move.
Good luck

Yes, Zerene is really fabulous. You probably have checked this out, but you can often reduce the ghosting by changing the parameters of DMap. Still, I end up mostly retouching from a PMax composite to get rid of most of it.

I own Helicon Focus, but I didn't often use it, and I no longer need it. Both my R6 II and my OM-1 II do focus bracketing automatically. I haven't yet tried flowers with the OM-1, but I did some with the R6 II, and the automated focus bracketing worked perfectly. I just set the focus a tiny bit in front of the closest part and let it go. I then have to delete the ones that are too close or far, but that's trivially easy. The only hard part is that both cameras have an arbitrary numerical scale for how far apart the images are because the actual distances will depend on the context. It takes a little trial and error to find what avoids gaps while not producing too many unnecessary images.

I don't think I've ever gone over 25 images in a stack for flowers, but I can't recall for certain.

[Round Tuit]

Yes, Zerene is really fabulous. You probably have checked this out, but you can often reduce the ghosting by changing the parameters of DMap. Still, I end up mostly retouching from a PMax composite to get rid of most of it.

I own Helicon Focus, but I didn't often use it, and I no longer need it. Both my R6 II and my OM-1 II do focus bracketing automatically. I haven't yet tried flowers with the OM-1, but I did some with the R6 II, and the automated focus bracketing worked perfectly. I just set the focus a tiny bit in front of the closest part and let it go. I then have to delete the ones that are too close or far, but that's trivially easy. The only hard part is that both cameras have an arbitrary numerical scale for how far apart the images are because the actual distances will depend on the context. It takes a little trial and error to find what avoids gaps while not producing too many unnecessary images.

I don't think I've ever gone over 25 images in a stack for flowers, but I can't recall for certain.

Even the PMax for this stack had a lot of ghosting. I have been using Canon EOS Utility to shoot tethered. It only offers three sizes of focusing steps, basically small,medium and large without specifying what they are. I usually use the smallest and take between 25 and 40 shots. I too normally start slightly before the near point and go until just past the far point.

[DanK]

Very interesting. There are only two places where I would expect problems: along the edges of the blue petals where there is something a good distance behind them.


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[Round Tuit]

Very interesting. There are only two places where I would expect problems: along the edges of the blue petals where there is something a good distance behind them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is mostly correct. The edges around the blue petals have halos all around and some transparent areas. There are also halos around the centre of the flower and some of the ridges seem to be out of alignment. The bud and withering flower are OK.

[DanK]

That is mostly correct. The edges around the blue petals have halos all around and some transparent areas. There are also halos around the centre of the flower and some of the ridges seem to be out of alignment. The bud and withering flower are OK.

That's odd. Normally, I get halos when there is a surface far back from an edge. There is nothing behind 90% of the circumference of the blue petals, so I don't know what would cause a halo. Also, PMax is quite resistant to halos.

For example, I went back just now and re-stacked this image, which I picked because it's technically somewhat similar:



This time I stacked in in DMap with default settings and contrast set to 10. The resulting stack (not the finished image posted here) has no halos other than where there is a surface behind an edge. For example, there are some at the bottom left of the flower, where there is a green leaf well behind the edge of the petal. The only place there are halos on edges backed by black is just to the left of top center, where the problem is white petals behind other white petals.

This all makes me suspect that there is something wrong with your stack. With such a large number of images, I don't see how you could have a focus gap. I've done images like this with far fewer images. Is it possible that you have an alignment problem?

[Round Tuit]

Dan,
I found the problem. I had six shots from a different run at the near end of the stack. I re-stacked with PMax and DMax after removing the imposters and both stacks are good except for a slight ghosting where the blue petal crosses the stem of the far bud.

[DanK]

Dan,
I found the problem. I had six shots from a different run at the near end of the stack. I re-stacked with PMax and DMax after removing the imposters and both stacks are good except for a slight ghosting where the blue petal crosses the stem of the far bud.

Andre,

Glad the problem is solved. That's exactly where I would have expected halos.

Dan