The wind died down enough today to let me stack this one. I had to shoot at an awkward angle through the wire cage that is trying to keep the deer from eating it – way too much trouble to remove it. We planted half a dozen and the gophers got the others, so this is the lone survivor.
All comments welcome!
Canon R5, 100 macro, f/8, ISO 800, 1/10 sec, stack of 20. No adjustments in raw, only a crop and minor BG softening in PS.
Wow, this is a great blackberry blossom photo. The detail in the foreground is perfect and it drops off nicely to the background. The light is gorgeous. And I hear you on the cage thing - all the important plants in our yard are in cages. And the fruit trees are in chicken-wire baskets beneath the ground so the gophers don’t get them. Is this a special type of blackberry? Around here we just collect from all the Himalayan blackberries that are growing invasively over everything.
Thanks, @Bonnie_Lampley! I missed the best light by about 10 minutes, as the sun was just dropping into the trees to the west. May try again this evening and go to the trouble to remove the cage. The blackberry is Columbia Giant, which is allegedly no so bad about creating a forest. We’ve been fighting Himalayan blackberries for years as they were expanding far too much. They have produced fewer and fewer berries in the increasingly dry years. There were quail living in the thicket but they haven’t come back since the fire.
I actually love the light. It is perfectly “understated” in my opinion. Stacked focus is also lovely.
Beautiful lighting and detail, Diane. When you set up to take an image of 20 stacks, do you decide how much of the image will be in focus and also left soft? In other words, did you purposely leave the bud in the URC soft? Just curious. Thanks.
This has the perfect soft spring feel to it Diane. Nice!
Thanks, @linda_mellor – it this case it just sort of happened. I had the camera set to 20 frames with pretty close spacing. (The actual closeness will be affected by the f/stop.) I had tested a few scenarios several months ago and made a note of the DOF they gave, by shooting down an angled ruler, but I can never think to double check beforehand. I had thought it would include the back flower but when I quickly reviewed the last frame I decided I liked it soft. That was probably affected by the discomfort of my contorted position trying to shoot through the cage with the subject only a few inches off the ground. If I do it again this evening I’ll put on kneepads. And check the DOF beforehand.
I do often like the look of a stack for the important details and leaving some BG details soft.
And of course stacking in the computer lets me have it both ways, instead of letting the camera do it and produce a JPEG. With Zerene Stacker, before I tell it to save the image, I can also retouch the final with OOF areas from some of the subs.
Normally I try to do more than I need and just delete the extras on the computer.
Thanks, @Diane_Miller. Still doing a lot of experimenting here and have seen taking more shots works out better, as you’ve said, you can always not use them in post. Good luck this evening, can’t wait to see the results!
