A couple of views of a blue orchid

paddler4

A mix of evening sunlight and a little tungsten for fill. Both stacked with zerene, DMap. 50D, EF-S 60mm macro, no extension.

SnoopMacro

Very pretty shots. Thanks for sharing these.

Ken

Lord Vetinari

Lovely captures- esp like #1
Brian v.

DeVil

Beautiful shots

paddler4

thanks, all

basflt

these shots are excellent

but

the stacking software spoils it IMO

paddler4

the stacking software spoils it IMO

Bas--can you say why? Did I miss some stacking artifacts? Or do you prefer the unstacked, narrower DOF? Or something else?

Thanks

Dan

basflt

Padler4 / Dan , you missed nothing

stacking software has its own artifacts ;
the glowing pixels in the white / grey area
not your fault though
its just that i dont like that

IMO flower-leaves have soft tones
in this case , manual stacking might be better

and , i dont prefer nothing
shallow or wide DOF can both work , thats your choice

i just dont like the weird speckles in a flower

paddler4

Bas--

Thanks. I know the problem you are referring to. I do get these glowing pixels (I've called them 'false specular highlights' in a couple of postings). In this case, though, stacking was not the problem. I was the problem. I went back and looked at some of the original images, and the ones with the white parts in focus have a similar pattern. It was poor use of lighting. I had lights too close, and I did not diffuse them this time. Not sure why I didn't.

I have found that you can make this stacking problem less severe by using DMap instead of PMax. DMap does not retain quite as much detail, but it is better for textures and saturation, so I think it works better for flowers.

Dan

basflt

good to hear / read

i tried stacking software in the past ,

flowers are usually large enough to capture in a single shot
and , if not
manually stacking is easy to do with flowers

think i gonne try flowers myself soon