An unknown fungi?

Images of undisturbed subjects in their natural environment. All subject types.

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elf
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An unknown fungi?

Post by elf »

Image

This is focus stacked with a combination of manual blending and CS4 blending. The initial blend by CS4 was not very good, so I did a manual blend, then added to the final image the few places where CS4 did a better job.

Can anyone ID this? It was found it in our front yard (Seattle).

And here's the setup:
Image

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

I like your set-up.

The mushroom could be Hygrocybe coccinea.

Cheers
Harry

Planapo
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Post by Planapo »

A good photo of a colourful "shroom", elf.
And thanks for showing the setup, that looks like a very nifty gadget for positioning the camera.

Gotta question to clarify things for me concerning English.
I recently heard this joke from a Brit:
"It´s saturday night. Why is the mushroom dancing in the disco? Well, `cause he's a fun guy!"
:lol: ... :smt017
I thought about it, and found from my understanding there is something not exactly fitting, since, from Latin, singular would be fungus (and fungi would be plural).

Now, I wonder if in English, maybe colloquially only, one can speak of "fungi" as singular, because I come across it being used quite often this way?

--Betty

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

Betty,

The English, my countrymen, like to use words of classical derivation without realising the grammatical consequences. "A phenomena" being a common error, for "a phenomenon", mainly by "the media". Imitation, perhaps out of politeness, only encourages misuse.

"Aluminium" is a singular! :D

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

rovebeetle wrote: The mushroom could be Hygrocybe coccinea.

Cheers
There are two other, similar species: H. helobia and H. cantharellus.

Hygrocybe coccinea and H. cantharellus were previously in Hygrophorus.

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Planapo wrote:Gotta question to clarify things for me concerning English.
...
Now, I wonder if in English, maybe colloquially only, one can speak of "fungi" as singular, because I come across it being used quite often this way?
I did a couple of Google searches just now, hoping to get a better handle on popular usage.

Google found 857,000 instances of "a fungus", versus 50,500 for "a fungi".

At first glance, that looks like a lot of mistakes. However, when I look closer at the actual hits, what I mostly see turn out to be cases where the word "fungi" is being used as an adjective, not as a plural noun. Examples include "a fungi expert", "a fungi feast", and so on. I also found lots of references to the "fun guy" pun.

Based on a quick scan of the first 100 hits, I estimate that only about 15% of them are actually using fungi as a singular noun. Of course that's still something like 7500 hits, a big number by itself but pretty small compared to 857,000.

So at this point, I'd say that prominent examples notwithstanding, English speakers still prefer "fungus" by 100:1.

Of course the use of "fungi" as an adjective could also be questioned. As a native English speaker, I would normally say "fly expert", not "flies expert". The plural sounds odd. The web agrees with me about this example, Google showing a score of 14,900 to 67.

However, using the singular form as an adjective is far from an iron-clad rule. The plural form "gems collection" is actually preferred over "gem collection" by 2:1 (166,000 to 84,000), even though "gems expert" loses to "gem expert" by 1:6 (1160 to 6750).

The situation with "fungi" is similar to "gems". According to Google, the score for "fungus expert" versus "fungi expert" is 3060 to 2570 --- clearly not what you'd call a landslide decision! The phrase "fungus hunt" is actually less common than "fungi hunt", 494 to 866.

I have no idea what sort of rule, if any, would explain these differences. I suspect it's just an irregular construction that people seldom think about.

Bottom line: "fungus" singular, "fungi" plural, either one as an adjective.

--Rik

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Post by rjlittlefield »

Elf, that's a lovely picture of the 'shroom!

And thanks also for showing us the setup -- it's definitely interesting to see this sort of equipment being used in a field setup.

It sounds like your experiences with CS4 focus stacking have been a bit disappointing. But I can't tell whether the difficulties are due to particularly tough subjects or to the particular algorithms in CS4. I wonder, have you run this stack through Helicon Focus or CombineZP, and if so, how did those results compare?

--Rik

Leif
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Post by Leif »

I think that one is impossible to id from a photo. It doesn't look right for H. coccinea though. And you will have species not known to us Europeans.

That's quite a set up!

Leif
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Post by Leif »

Planapo wrote:A good photo of a colourful "shroom", elf.
And thanks for showing the setup, that looks like a very nifty gadget for positioning the camera.

Gotta question to clarify things for me concerning English.
I recently heard this joke from a Brit:
"It´s saturday night. Why is the mushroom dancing in the disco? Well, `cause he's a fun guy!"
:lol: ... :smt017
I thought about it, and found from my understanding there is something not exactly fitting, since, from Latin, singular would be fungus (and fungi would be plural).

Now, I wonder if in English, maybe colloquially only, one can speak of "fungi" as singular, because I come across it being used quite often this way?

--Betty
Your response is far funnier than the 'joke'. :) Of course you are right but jokes do not always use grammatically correct English. I guess that might not be the case in German.

elf
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Post by elf »

Planapo wrote: Now, I wonder if in English, maybe colloquially only, one can speak of "fungi" as singular,
I'll claim poetic license, fungi just sounds better than fungus 8)
rovebeetle wrote:The mushroom could be Hygrocybe coccinea
Somehow the online images of Hygrocybe coccinea don't look quite right, but none of the others suggested do either. They all seem to be edible, but I think I'll not try it :O)

Harold Gough wrote:Imitation, perhaps out of politeness, only encourages misuse.
It's only misuse until it becomes the accepted and expected usage 8)
rjlittlefield wrote: And thanks also for showing us the setup -- it's definitely interesting to see this sort of equipment being used in a field setup.
I'm pretty happy with the modifications I've made recently for doing macros. I can put the camera almost on the ground with it right side up so the articulated Live View works. I can gain another inch if the camera is mounted upside down. I can make large movements in the camera position by unlocking knobs and still have fine control with several different lead screws. I need to put together a new set of pictures showing all of it's capabilities. Here's a closer view:
.Image
rjlittlefield wrote:
It sounds like your experiences with CS4 focus stacking have been a bit disappointing. But I can't tell whether the difficulties are due to particularly tough subjects or to the particular algorithms in CS4. I wonder, have you run this stack through Helicon Focus or CombineZP, and if so, how did those results compare?

--Rik
The hard edged masks with non-reversable color shifts plus the random selection of out of focus areas make it hard to get an acceptable image out of CS4. I tried the same images in CombineZP and the results were also not usable. Most of this was due to the fact, the images weren't aligned well enough. The CS4 image was better looking than CombineZP, but neither was as good overall as the manual blend. Manual blends are tedious and time consuming, so getting a good software solution would be very nice.


p.s. The masking tape on the camera isn't for recording the ISO number :)

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

Leif wrote: Of course you are right but jokes do not always use grammatically correct English.
Perhaps that kind of misuse should be punnished? :D

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

Harold Gough
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Post by Harold Gough »

elf wrote:[It's only misuse until it becomes the accepted and expected usage 8) interesting to see this sort of equipment being used in a field setup.
It depends on who is misusing and in what context.

Deviating from English to French, I can make myself understood as a tourist in France. However, I'm sure I get the gender of some nouns reversed. Doubtless, many other English/American tourists will make similar mistakes. However, no matter whether we outnumber the French in their own country, our version will not become correct on that basis.

"Cactus" was the name chosen, based on a Greek word kaktos, meaning a thistle or other spiny plant. There is no plant currently in the genus Cactus, all having been moved, mostly to Melocactus, an unrepresentative genus for the diversity of the family Cactaceae. The term "a cactus" or "a cacti", as used by the general, non cactus-specialist public, tends to mean any succulent plant, including true cacti but also dozens of other families. Thus, as a term for communicating an idea, it has some validity but that does not make it correct and it remains an approximation, wheras "cactus" strictly means a plant of the family Cactaceae.

Within the fungi, the terms "mushroom" and "toadstool" mean different things to the general public (mushrooms are sold in shops, toadstools grow in the wild: however all accept "field mushrooms") and to specialists (the terms are interchageable, generally applying to the gill fungi but sometimes including other groups such as Ascomycetes).

Words and phrases change thier meanings over time. We used to have two different nouns, "mistrust", meaning to have unwisely trusted and "distrust", meaning to judge as untrustworthy. Now they are interchageable.

The phrase "to fight with" has, at different times in English history meant to side with or to side against. If the discusion got heated I might choose to fight with you. You can mean singular or plural, important if I came to a physical fight. ("Cold feet" is plural, never see in the singular in this context, and "yellow streak" is singular, never seen in the plural in this context).

:D

Harold
My images are a medium for sharing some of my experiences: they are not me.

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

elf wrote:It's only misuse until it becomes the accepted and expected usage.
Yep. When I was researching "data" versus "datum" a couple of weeks ago, I ran across this delightful sentence:
Ned Batchelder wrote:We can quibble over the nature of language, and how it changes over time, and how usage smoothly transitions from slang to natural to correct to pedantic to outmoded to archaic.
I love that sequence: "slang to natural to correct to pedantic to outmoded to archaic".

The English language has a long and prolific history of picking up words from other languages, not necessarily (ahem) preserving all the nuances.

In those cases, the sequence is more like "adopted to adapted", and thence to correct, etc., as described by Mr. Batchelder.

--Rik

rovebeetle
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Post by rovebeetle »

Leif wrote:I think that one is impossible to id from a photo. It doesn't look right for H. coccinea though. And you will have species not known to us Europeans.
Ah, yes, overlooked the "Seattle" part of the posting.

Cheers
Harry

Leif
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Post by Leif »

Elf: The Hygrocybe genus is not an easy one, and to get an id often requires that you examine the nature of the cap and stem surface, and the gill attachment. In particular, are the cap and stem greasy, dry, or scurfy, and are the gills decurrent (running down the stem). If you are keen on this genus, then you might want to get the book by David Boertmann although it applies to European Hygrocybe species.

Incidentally the caps look scurfy which narrows down the options.

Regarding your equipment, wouldn't it be easier to use a Gitzo Explorer (with an L-bracket) or a Uniloc/Benbo tripod? I used a Uniloc 1600 for 10 years and now use a Gitzo. They are well suited to your purposes. And you can also use a bean bag for ground level shots.

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