It rained last night and this morning, so when I went out to feed birds and it wasn’t raining any more, I grabbed the camera to see what I could find for this challenge. The Camas, which is our signature prairie plant, has started blooming and the rain seemed to favor that as there was considerably more in bloom than yesterday. This was a three image stack.
Three images taken at f/8 1/100, iso 400, manual exposure and manual focus. Canon 5DIII and 100 mm macro. Tripod with legs fully splayed and two second timer. Cropped from a horizontal original and a couple of leaves that had been nibbled removed. Stacking with Helicon focus.
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Dennis, the drops stand out beautifully here. The flower is also striking. With that lens you can get to life size (1:1) magnification, so I’m surprised that you didn’t move in closer and take a vertical. Yes, that would likely mean more images in the stack but it seems that with a beauty like this it would have been worth the extra effort.
Hi Mark. I really need to invest in the angle bracket for this camera. I have shot verticals, bu with the tripod legs fully splayed and the ball head rotated into the side slot, the legs get in the way of the camera, and adjustments are difficult, so I got lazy when I took this one.
PS. after I wrote the above, I finally remembered that the reason I never bothered with the angle bracket was that my usual go to lens for macro is the 180 mm and it has a rotating tripod collar that makes it unnecessary. Old age is a pain!
Dennis, I too have both the 100 and the 180. The 100 now lives in a drawer. My understanding is that once you get into the “high magnification” regime (I’m think about 1/4 life size on the chip or larger) the changes in dof with focal length become minimal, so I don’t see any reason to use the 100…
It is a real beauty, Dennis. Love the refractions in the droplets on this beautiful flower. I have both lenses, and find I use the 100 mm handheld with the twin flash most of the time, but you are right, on a tripod with a ball head, it can become a challenge to do verticals. I think it turned out very nice. Love the color of the flower.
