A Hardy Terrestrial Orchid Pleione formosana Images Added

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 3:45 pm

These terrestrial orchids are easier to grow than the epiphytic ones.

EP-2, ED 35mm 3.5 4/3 macro, hand-held.

Edit: exif data found in Raw file: 1/100 f8 ISO 640 AF

Edit: exif data found in Raw file: 1/40 f10 ISO 640 AF

Harold

orionmystery · Post by **orionmystery** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 8:50 pm

Lovely shots, beautiful orchid. Esp like 2.

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:37 am

Here is a cross-eye stereo pair, using a tripod:

Do they work for you?

Harold

Mitch640 · Post by **Mitch640** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:16 am

The stereo works for me, although I had to work at it. Some just kind of drop into place, some don't. Haven't figured out why.

MarkB1 · Post by **MarkB1** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:58 am

and the stereo works fine.

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 8:35 am

Thanks, Mitch & Mark

That slab of almost white may work against it. Unfortunately, I had to rush to get it done before a visitor turned up and this could be the last day of the flower looking so good.

Having now found a bit more time, and not so rushed, here is another pair, this time without the slab of pale background:

I had great difficulty in loading one of these images, the software claiming it was too large whereas it is minute compared with some I have posted.

Harold

lauriek · Post by **lauriek** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 9:00 am

Tis a lovely flower, the trumpet reminds me of a foxglove in shape and pattern, although it does have extra frilly bits!

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 9:00 am

Yep, clicking into register quickly and making a clean image.

At 291,735 bytes you're only just inside the 300k file size limit, perhaps the compression wasn't enough.

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 9:49 am

Thanks, Chaps.

I wish I could see cross-eye ones. No problem with conventional transparency pairs.

It was taken on the EP-2 with the Olympus 4/35mm macro lens, on a tripod at about f16, ISO 100 (? my exif data is still missing), bright overcast day, no wind.

I've taken a series of shots for eventual stacking. It was to be a stereo pair but the light changed after the left set, going from sun to overcast for an indefinite period.

Harold

conkar · Post by **conkar** » Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:47 am

Thanks for the nice pictures Harold!

You also seems to have a good collection of interesting plants in your garden.

May I ask you if there are some Carnivorous plants in your collection?

Best regards,

Conny

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 1:20 am

Thanks to some PM coaching from Chris, I can now see all cross-eye pairs in 3D. Great joy!

Harold

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 1:45 am

conkar wrote:Thanks for the nice pictures Harold!

You also seems to have a good collection of interesting plants in your garden.

May I ask you if there are some Carnivorous plants in your collection?

Conny,

Thanks for your interest.

My collection has hundreds of cacti and other succulents, accumulated over 50 years.

In the 1970s my wife and I set up an intermediate orchid house, at great cost for electricity. I have recently gone back to keeping some intermediate orchids.

We also, in another greenhouse, kept some carnivorous plants (we have Adrian Slack's book), Sarracenia, Venus Fly Trap, Drosera, etc. We have not had them for many years but retirement gives opportunities...

There have been variuos houseplants over the years.

We continue to collect interesting and photogenic indoor and hardy plants.

I have many hundreds of transparencies, mostly on Kodachrome 25, mostly cacti in flower but many others, including exotic Ceropegias, Mesembyanthemaceae, Asclepiadaceae, and many more. In some cases I had access to private collections.

As I have just had to purchase a terabyte external drive to take the overflow from my hard drive caused by the new problem of digital image files, and have actually used Photoshop, I suppose I am running out of excuses not to get the film scanner into use.

Harold

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 6:14 am

I said I had done a series for stacking. I used my Manfrotto 454 rail, out of its packet for the first time.

I have also installed Zerene Stacker.

I gave some initial sharpening and increased contrast slightly in Olympus Master 2, the only software which will download and read ORFs. I then fed the 19 images (f3.5) into Zerene Stacker.

Unfortunately, having set up the rail carefully (in a shaded conservatory), while fiddling with it I seem to have moved the focus unknowingly, losing the closest part of the flower. So the stack was disappointing. The good news is that, without moving the setup (on tripod) I took a standard, small aperture shot. I re-ran the stack, getting ZS to combine the deep focus image with the first stack. I then process in Photoshop and here is the result (total 20 shots).

Stacked:

Stacked, cropped:

The original, single, outdoor shot:

I had considerable difficulty getting this post how I wanted it and some folks may hacve seen it with only one image at times during that process.

Harold

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 6:27 am

Thanks to some PM coaching from Chris, I can now see all cross-eye pairs in 3D. Great joy!

Glad you got there! I think the vernacular expression might be DEEP joy!

Harold Gough · Post by **Harold Gough** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:45 am

The shooting position for thr stacks and for the single shot, small aperture were the same. You may have decided that the stack give the best result. However, I bellieve I trusted the AF too much.

Here is another shot where I double-checked, and given similar adjustment:

Harold