Echinocereus davisii

[cactuspic]

I am not sure whether this has been lumped in with the viridiflorus or whether it is a separate species these days. It flowered over the weekend. Hope you enjoy.

Echinocereus davisii


I have a more common Echinocereus viridiflorus attached.


Irwin

[Ken Ramos]

You know I really like the depth of field in these , especially the first one. There seems to be a smudge though in the area of the flowers. Are you using some sort of noise reduction?

[cactuspic]

Thanks Ken. There was no noise reduction used. In the bottom of the flower tube, especially if it has become translucent in part, the lighting can tend to glow softly , as in the first image.

Something else is happening in the second image . This is an older image that was compiled at an earlier time. The program does not like large areas of a relatively uniform color with subtle detail in low contrast lighting. It can't tell what is detail and what is not so it mushes these areas. In the fist image, I manually chose which slice controled each of the areas of the flower petals. When I compile the first image, I did not know how to do this. I think the details in the petals mushed. I will have to recompile.

Irwin

[Bruce Williams]

What beautiful coloured spination these Echinocereus have. Echino floweres are some of the most spectacular aren't they.

I have also been experiencing some problems with stacking and low contrast mush. Rik carried out some interesting tests with a stack of mine and has posted some interesting (and quite impressive) results in the Macro and Micro Technique and Technical Discussions Forum, see:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... php?t=1808

You say that you manually chose which slice controled each of the areas of the flower petals. Is that a technique that I can use in CombineZM or are you using Helycon Focus?

Bruce

[cactuspic]

What beautiful coloured spination these Echinocereus have. Echino floweres are some of the most spectacular aren't they.

I have also been experiencing some problems with stacking and low contrast mush. Rik carried out some interesting tests with a stack of mine and has posted some interesting (and quite impressive) results in the Macro and Micro Technique and Technical Discussions Forum, see:

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/v ... php?t=1808

You say that you manually chose which slice controled each of the areas of the flower petals. Is that a technique that I can use in CombineZM or are you using Helycon Focus?

Bruce

Hi Bruce, Thank you for the info (Also thanks to Rik )I do use Helicon and they let me choose an individual slice in a side-by-side window and paint portions of the slice onto the final composite. On several petals of the Davisii had been mushed but I totally replaced them with the best slices. I don't know if Combine has a comparable technique. I need to try it to get a sense of its strengths and weaknesses.

Echinocereus are some of my very favorites, also. An echinocereus was my first good picture. From spination to their blooms, they continue to fascinate me. A number of the reichenbackii are local (Texas) as are species such as dasiacanthus, (Big Bend) so I have had a chance to see them in growing in nature.

In fact, my first cactus, which came in a box, was an echinocereus. I never knew if the plant was alive. Since I was fascinated nevertheless, I tried to make sure that all future acquisitions were living.

Take care.

Irwin

[DaveW]

Echinocereus davisii is either lumped in with viridiflorus or a seperate species according to who you follow. It is of course the smallest Echinocereus, the miniature of that genus.

DaveW

[rjlittlefield]

You say that you manually chose which slice controled each of the areas of the flower petals. Is that a technique that I can use in CombineZM...

Yes, CombineZM does have this. The user interface is different and not so obvious as Helicon Focus's -- likely you'll have to poke through the documentation to figure it out.

--Rik

[cactuspic]

Thanks Dave and Rik--aprreciate the response. I will be giving a little spiel this weekend for the local photo club on stacking so the info is particularly helpful.

Best regards

Irwin