A single maple flower

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 1:40 am

Spring must be coming -- my maple tree is blooming!

--Rik

Bruce Williams · Post by **Bruce Williams** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:01 am

A welcome harbinger of warmer days to come (and more things to photograph)

You've achieved both artistic and technical excellence with this bi-colour study Rik. Levels and colour saturation are spot on and the out of focus stamens at back nicely accentuate the three dimensional nature of the subject.

Bruce

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 8:35 am

Wow, pretty neat there Rik. Looks sort of like what I got in my front yard. Maybe it's a maple.

MacroLuv · Post by **MacroLuv** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:23 am

Masterfully done, Rik!

I'm just curious about F-stop, actually magnification (x:1), amount of applied sharpening and flash usage?
I would be in temptation to clone out one black and few white spots from this beauty.

Mike B in OKlahoma · Post by **Mike B in OKlahoma** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 10:48 am

This is gorgeous!

I too am such a gadget geek that I am moved beyond artistic admiration to wonder about the technicals. I am SUCH a Philistine!

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:51 am

Thanks, guys!

I'm always surprised by what these flowers look like up close. Even when you have some in hand, they're pretty "blah" until you haul out the magnifying glass. Then they're, well, what you see here!

Ken, I'm not sure what your flowers are. Every time I go to the east coast, I'm impressed that I do not recognize most of the trees! I guess we'll know in a few months. If yours has maple-shaped leaves and makes those little winged seeds, maybe it's a maple?

Nikola, Bruce, and Mike, see this technical description over in the Technique forum.

--Rik

crotermund · Post by **crotermund** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:10 pm

This picture is beautiful, Rik. You, Bruce, and others have certainly inspired me to investigate the stacking technique. Is it pretty time consuming to complete a single photograph using this technique? I know it is worth it in the end after seeing what you do, but I am curious.

beetleman · Post by **beetleman** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 9:03 pm

Very Beautiful picture Rik. The colors are fantastic

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:24 pm

crotermund wrote:Is it pretty time consuming to complete a single photograph using this technique?

Doing the first few takes a long time. At this point, I have equipment and procedures that make stacking pretty painless. For this picture, I spent much more time in specimen prep and getting the final image polished for posting, than I did in shooting and processing the stack. It's quick enough that for a static subject, I will seldom choose not to stack.

--Rik

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 11:27 pm

beetleman wrote:Very Beautiful picture Rik. The colors are fantastic

I agree, they are! But I had nothing to do with the colors except make them big enough to see. These are straight off the tree.

--Rik

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 10:00 pm

crotermund wrote:Is it pretty time consuming to complete a single photograph using this technique?

Craig, I looked at the timestamps on the various image files.

Turns out to have been just under 10 minutes from first frame in the stack to being done with Helicon Focus. Actually shooting the stack was only 88 seconds for all 30 frames. (They go pretty fast at low magnification where there's plenty of light, large steps turning the screw, and no worries about vibration.) So that's the stacking cost -- 10 minutes.

In contrast, the total time futzing around with specimen prep, lighting, trial images, more specimen prep, wrestling with positioning, still more specimen prep (yes, there's a pattern here...), then post-processing and eventually posting, was more like 3 hours.

If I were faster at all the other stuff, maybe I'd be less fond of stacking.

--Rik