The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Time for Anemonoides nemorosa! Again in the woods around my house, it is a nice little wood close to a stream, a rather humid environment. Again (limited) focus stacking, manually changing the focus while taking the pictures… I tried to balance in-focus parts with more fluffy parts (some of the petals, for example), not sure it conveys the feeling I wanted…
Specific Feedback
Any feedback is welcome!
Technical Details
Fuji X-H2 with Leica APO-macro R 100/2.8 (an old R lens), focus stacking using Helicon Focus, f/4, 1/50 sec, ISO 400, Developed in LR Classic
Beautiful image Antonello. I like the bottom corners of the image and how they draw the eye up to the stem and the stem to the main attraction. I might have pulled the histogram back a bit for the high-lights to reveal a tad more detail/contrast (darker veins) there in the brighter petals.
I love images like this! It is surprisingly difficult to get everything in focus, isnt it? If you love macro, it’s almost worth it to find a body that has a focus shifting feature. I have found a marked quality increase after using that on my D850 and Z8. I personally would like to see a bit more color and detail in the leaves and maybe a bit of highlight reduction on the petals. You can maintain the look your after by adding a vignette. No matter how you do it though, the best part is that you got to be there, kneeling on the forest floor, absorbing the beauty and capturing it to share with us! Thank you!
@Paul_Holdorf , @michael18 thank you for your comments and suggestions! I’ll try to implement them.
As for the focus stacking, the camera does have automatic focus shift but… the lens I used is a manual focus lens. Exceptional high quality (it is a truly APO lens) but quite an old design…
And yes, you are perfectly right: the main pleasure is to crawl in the understory looking for small-world landscapes and living beings (and trying to avoid ticks…)
Beautiful image, Antonello. Some of the foreground out of focus areas do bother me a little, particularly the leaf in the lower left. I think f/8 or so would have mellowed out that transition from in focus to out of focus, but that’s largely a matter of taste. The composition is superb.
@Dennis_Plank , @Allen_Brooks thanks for your comments! I go myself back and forth between liking and not liking the soft leaves in the foreground… Experimenting, experimenting…
