Category: Focus Stacking

Daffodils (Past Prime Display) on Black Velvet

Daffodils (Past Prime Display) on Black Velvet

Another image that I posted previously, but changed enough that I wanted to share this version. I wasn’t really all that excited about the previous one … I liked it, but the longer I looked at it, the more I wanted something different. So I went back into edit mode in Lightroom and selected the subject and after an hour or two of making sure the mask was accurate, I had something that I really liked.

(There’s not really any black velvet involved.)

Here’s the link to the previous version: https://wordpress.com/post/ajjphotoblog.com/7979

4

Dried Daffs

Dried Daffs

This is a combination of two different bouquets of daffodils. You can tell the difference between the two from the colors … but it’s not easy to see in this image. This is a focus stack of about 5 images.

I had an overhead light on and the background was two sheets of the same color mat board that I had laying around. I was amazed at how different the color showed up from the direction of the light. The distant background was lit more by the light through my north-facing sliding glass door. I also played around with the color of the background… the mat board is a medium brown. I used the subject mask option in LIghtroom to avoid changing the color of the daffodils.

2

Tulips — past optimum display

Tulips — past optimum display

My sister brought me these … they were from her yard. They were quite nice and I enjoyed them right up through taking this photo. By the next day, they were really sad and they went the way of such.

This was a 5 image focus stack … (5 images with different focus points combined). That keeps the different parts of the image all staying in full focus. It allows the use of wider f/stops, which keeps diffraction from being an issue … which can happen with (for instance) an f/stop of f/16.

2

Dried Daffodils – Focus Stacked

Dried Daffodils

These daffodils are the same ones that I posted a photo of back on March 1st. I just emptied out the water, once they were past prime, and let them dry. In the past, I have hung them upside down. That keeps the blooms from tipping over and pointing downwards, like these do. I like the way that the milk bottle I was using for a vase distorts the stems, making them look jagged.

This is also another focus stack, like my previous post. In this case, it was a combination of 45 images. I used my Nikon D850 with a 105mm Macro lens on a tripod. I was shooting at ISO 100 and f/16, so each image was over 1 second. Again, clicking on the image will provide you with a larger image.

2

Cactus Focus Stack

Cactus Focus Stack

To really see this image, I would recommend clicking on the image to enlarge it. I took 98 images of this cactus, while changing the focus very slightly between exposures. I then used HeliconFocus to combine the images … the software takes the parts of each image that are in focus and combines them into a single image. That combining took the computer over 20 minutes of processing time.

When you see this type of image large, they often look almost unrealistic in their sharpness. When we look at an object, our eyes may focus on the details of one part of the object. The other parts of the object are then not in focus … So, when we see an image like this, it seems a little unnatural, because we are expecting the primary subject to be in focus and the rest to be less so. (at least, that’s my opinion)

5

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: