Narcissus papyraceus

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 11:01 am

Paper white narcissus - white daffodil.

Model Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL
Date/time original 18.03.2007 11:29:24
Shutter speed value 1/100 s
Aperture value f/22
ISO speed ratings ISO 200
Focal length 85 mm

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Sat Mar 24, 2007 11:50 am

Excellent job with a very difficult subject Nikola.

In my experience bright white flowers are always difficult. If you underexpose to avoid blowing highlights you stand the risk of a dull, lacklustre result. In this instance it would have been so easy to lose those subtle, longitudinal striations that give texture to the corona and perianth and impact to the photograph.

IMO you've got the balance about spot on and the shadows also help to give dimension to the subject.

Nice one

Bruce

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 4:33 am

I agree with Bruce on the whites. The flowers on the right are bright but you still see a lot of detail in them.....A sure sign of spring

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sun Mar 25, 2007 1:58 pm

Far better than and more artistic pictures than mine Nikola! Mine were however done as a diffraction test to see if the smallest apertures on my 70mm-180mm micro Nikkor were usable at this sort of magnification to get increased depth of field for Web use. They may not be very good for prints though. I am just posting these as a matter of interest as to diffraction effects for small apertures at this magnification.

f32

f22

f11

All taken indoors by light from window. Exposures 1-2 seconds as light varied quickly due to clouding over for a snow storm! Straightforward Nikon Matrix Metering with no exposure adjustment. RAW processed in Elements 4 at default settings with no further adjustment and transferred to the Editor where they were cropped and resized to 800 pixels maximum dimension and sharpened using Unsharp Mask @ 80%/2/5 then saved as JPEG for Web at just under 150k file size. Apertures are those marked on the lens, not necessarily the effective apertures at this magnification.

DaveW

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Mon Mar 26, 2007 3:31 pm

Thanks folks!

Dave, yours images shows very well with nice DOF, IMO.
I was lucky with sunlight and f/22 is the minimum apreture for my 85mm lens, I think.

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 3:12 am

Yes really nicely captured Nikola,lovely flowers.
Of course technically they're not daffodils as the corolla,the bit in the middle, is shorter than the petals making them Jonquils.On daffodils the corolla is as long or longer than the petals

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Tue Mar 27, 2007 9:13 am

Thanks Larry!

I'm confident about your definition, after all daffodil is a common English name, sometimes used for all narcissus.

Cyclops · Post by **Cyclops** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 3:00 am

DaveW wrote:Far better than and more artistic pictures than mine Nikola! Mine were however done as a diffraction test to see if the smallest apertures on my 70mm-180mm micro Nikkor were usable at this sort of magnification to get increased depth of field for Web use. They may not be very good for prints though. I am just posting these as a matter of interest as to diffraction effects for small apertures at this magnification.

DaveW

Interesting test Dave but as most screens only have a resolution of 72 ppi I doubt any differences would show on here-I bet you can see it on good prints tho!
Also I think unsharp mask would counter some of the effects too.

DaveW · Post by **DaveW** » Sat Mar 31, 2007 4:36 am

Cyclops,

The test was done to see if you could get away with that degree of diffraction for on screen or projected use, though it would produce a very poor print. There is no point having a higher resolution than a monitor or projection screen can produce if that is to be the sole method of reproduction and higher resolution is at the expense of depth of field close up at such magnifications. I doubt I will ever bother printing any of my images out, all are for use on the Web or for projection at the club I belong to.

I noticed on TV programs years ago their natural history shots seemed to have more depth of field at certain magnifications than I could get. I then guessed it was because TV has a lower resolution than either prints or directly viewed rather than projected slides, so areas that look super sharp or slightly fuzzy on a slide or print, all look equally sharp on the TV screen?

The experiment therefore was to see how much diffraction I could get away with on a monitor for web use, or for use with projector screens in order to use the smaller apertures for depth of field. Put another way, though it may show on a print how much smaller an aperture can you get away with for projection or web use to gain extra DOF without it starting to show? No doubt somebody will now put me right if I am going in the wrong direction?

DaveW