I was cruising the garden this morning and came upon this late blooming osteospermum. These are normally spring flowers but the plant remained healthy through the summer and I expect our spring like fall has fooled it into producing some flowers. I liked the light but this is an HDR capture to bring out the color in the center. All comments welcome. >=))>
Is this a composite: No
Sony A7RIII
Minolta 200mm macro
ISO 400, 1/3200 @ f5.6
Bill, it really is picture-perfect. How does your HDR capture technique differ from a stack?
Mike: With the HDR the only thing that changes is exposure. I take 5 shots at one stop difference from +2 through -2 and combine them in Lightroom. My camera allows me to determine the number of exposures and the separation between stops. I think one could actually use just three exposures from +2 through -2 and it would make it easier on the software considering these are 42MP RAW files.
Hi Bill,
HDR gave you some nice details in the dark center of the flower. The flower looks very blue to me so I guess that this was taken under shady conditions. I would take out some of the cyan to warm it up a tad. Other than that, a fantastic view of this Osteospermum…Jim
A beauty! No flowers here. Just snow. A refreshing sight.
Bill, this is a beautiful flower. I’m not familiar with it, so not sure if the colors are accurate, so I trust you with that. I love the blue in the center. The square crop works well for this.
Beautifully composed with superb detail and color. The background is perfect.
Drop-dead gorgeous! The HDR looks seamless and the tonalities are well-balanced. It could be an interesting comparison to tone down the highlights in the left BG a little. They are gorgeous but jump out past the lovely flower a bit.
I rarely think to use HDR captures these days, with the capability of the Shadows and Highlights sliders and tonal masking (by hand in the old days, then with the TK panels, and now in LR) but it is certainly better to capture the full tonal range to start with. I’ve gotten lazy and need to remember to use it more. Thanks for the nudge!
