Cactus Flower

I found this flower at the botanical gardens today so I got down low and took a series of shots to focus stack. Canon 90D canon 180 macro. I had the crop camera for insects so I might go back with my full frame camera and a focus rail. I took 7 shots. iso 500 1/250 F/14. No flash and was on a tripod. I set the camera to more the mirror and put a 2 second delay. Going back Friday so open to anything to help next round of shooting. I do like the composition and that is what I was trying for. The was a flower on a barrel cactus

4 Likes

Dean, this is gorgeous. I don’t think I have seen a flower like it, having lived on the east coast all of my life, and only visited out west occasionally, is understandable though. I don’t see anything that could improve the image. Great shot.

Excellent shot…how do you explain the glow from within? Tremendous shot…good luck on your reshoot, though I’m not sure how you could make this any better.

Hi Dean,

Looks fine as presented. The yellows are rich and detailed and you captured some interesting features of this flower…Jim

Dean: Frame filling fantastic. I especially like the light and inner glow. Just playing devil’s advocate, on a shot like this where there’s no BG to contend with I would expect a single capture at f22 with a carefully placed hyperfocal POF would produce similar results. That’s clearly my bias toward avoiding lots of processing time/effort showing up. Bottom line, this is a fine image and one you should be proud of. >=))>

1 Like

Beautiful image! How did you do the focus stacking? Manually moving the focus or controlled by a laptop or phone with a program like Helicon focus? What did you use for processing? It would be interesting to see what a single shot at f/22 would produce for comparison as Bill suggested. I think in principle a well done focus stack should do better at f/14 vs. single shot at f/22, because of diffraction effects at the smaller apperture - better DOF but worse focus quality. But still a comparison would be interesting. In any case this is a wonderful image. I am shooting a succulent/cactus garden at Stanford - love cactus flowers and I have found a similar “inner glow” in some of my shots when the sunlight is strong and penetrates the body of the flower. In fact if the sun is directly shining on the face of the flower, I have some nice shots of the flower from the side with the glow leaking out of the side, something to try. :slight_smile:

Thanks all, Greg I use Helicon, it seems to work well. Method C seem the best but usually use A. I have a good focus rail where I can put a motor but I only use focus stack on simple subjects unlike a insect with tons of frames. It was pretty hot so I used F/14 to reduce the number of frames. Usually with the F/3.5 I set it at f/8

I did a F/32 with the thought of what Bill was saying but I missed the right spot of focus, maybe 32 was too much. It did not help that I forgot my hoodman viewer. I was trying for more of the top of the flower to be included but I did not have the full frame.

What attracted me was that inner glow, this was about 10am and we had a very hazy day. The cactus was only about 2 feet high and the flower was aimed at the sun. So I put myself just above level to it. I put my camera down and just sat there a few minutes thinking about the composition, something I have been doing lately.

This is truly gorgeous! I’m looking forward to the follow-up! It’s wonderful how the petals quietly repeat the stronger colors from the center. I find a moderate aperture like 11-14 somewhat minimizes artifacts from overlapping elements. For a closeup, the DOF is limited anyway, compared to a landscape, and I doubt the smallest aperture would capture sharpness throughout the frame, even if diffracion was not a factor. I used Helicon a few years ago but found ZereneStacker was better at handling OOF fringe areas from overlapping elements. That may have improved with Helicon by now.

This image is truly lovely Dean.

Wondering, did you move the focus manually, or let HF do it for you?

I moved it manually. That is another reason I wonder if a focus rail is better, because the focus of the lens stays the same but do not know if that matters. Lots of times I will just take 2 or 3 photos at different focus and use PS to put it all together.

This image is stunning! I don’t see how you could improve it. The inner glow , composition and details are exceptional.

Dean, there is an associated program you get with HF. You load it on your laptop or smart phone and connect to your camera. It allow you to set the nearest point and farther point, indicate your choice of f# and then it caclulates the number of shots necessary for correct spacing between the shots. You tell it to start and it shoots them all automatically. It changes the focus of your lens between shots to create the proper change as it has already calculated. You can choose to store the shots on the camera (storage chip) or on your laptop or phone. It works very well. Otherwise to get the optimum spacing you would need a rail with graduations to know how far you moved each time. I don’t use a rail, just move the camera focus through the object. The flower I posted previously (with about 80 stacked images) was done that way. No way I could have manually done as well as the program did. For many other situations I will ‘eyeball’ (guess) how much to change the focus and do that until I have gone through the focal planes I want to. But that’s certainly not optimal - it’s just good enough sometimes for my purpose. The remote control program is called “Helicon Remote”.

Dean, this is an outstanding look at the center of this flower. I don’t seen any stacking artifacts in the larger view. For a shot where there’s very little overlap of fine details either Helicon’s B or C methods will work. If you have any white areas, the C method will often need some retouching, since it makes the surroundings go white. There is one petal edge near the lower right corner that slightly soft, but that’s not effecting on the power of this image.

Thanks Greg and Mark as that helps more about that software and what it does. I do not use it very much. I need to learn more about it.

Excellent image, Dean. I love the center glow. The only area I can see that you missed getting crisp is the lower right corner and it’s not really noticeable until one really starts looking for such things. I don’t use a rail nor do I bother with the Helicon Focus automated system. I just move my focus manually as you did here and it usually works pretty well.

Gorgeous shot of this flower. The center glow really makes it. Well done!