Something to do, macro of silk flowers

[Hack]

Something to do, macro of silk flowers

I was bored and looking for something to be an decided to make some on my wife's silk flowers the subject of my macro pics.

I took a total of 5 shots while focusing through the flowers. The camera stayed on in place on the tripod. I used a remote shutter release and CombineZP to stack the 5 pics. With CZP I first aligned and balanced (thorough) and then did the pyramid max contrast.

The first image is the first pic of the 5 I used
the second image is the stacked product.

What do you think?

Hack

Camera Make: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 40D
Image Date: 2010:01:21 23:08:05
Flash Used: Yes (Manual)
Focal Length: 100.0mm
Exposure Time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO equiv: 400
Exposure Bias: -1.67
Metering Mode: Matrix
Exposure: program (Auto)
Caption: Modified by CombineZP

[Hack]

I did some cropping on #2. I think this is better.

Hack

[rjlittlefield]

Silk flowers make excellent subjects for practicing macro. They have lots of fine detail, they don't wilt while you're shooting, and you can even use the very same subject next week -- all big improvements over real flowers for practicing.

These images are coming along well.

One opportunity for improvement is to stop down farther. At this low magnification, there is no advantage to opening wide and then stacking. You can stop down to at least f/11 and probably f/16 without losing any detail to diffraction, even if you're pixel-peeping. For reduced-size web presentation, you can stop down even farther. Stopping down will give you more DOF in each frame (proportional to the f-number), and that increased DOF will translate into either less obvious focus banding or fewer frames needed to eliminate visible focus banding altogether.

I hope this helps. Looks like you're having fun with this stuff.

--Rik

[Hack]

Thanks Rik,

I was wondering about stepping the aperture down and maybe not do the stacking - but dang-it, stacking is fun to me.

This time I was using the built-in flash of the 40D, next time I'll use my Canon Ring flash and maybe reduce the intensity of the flash.

BTW, you'll be hearing from me at the end of the month - I think you know what I mean.

Hack