Out With the Old

Image Critiques Flora Critiques
1

Out-With-the-Old-45714A7r3XL.jpg
Out-With-the-Old-45714A7r3XL.jpg1334×2000 1.49 MB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Old year, new flower. I thought my last post of the year would be of a hibiscus. We had an incredible year with them but I didn’t post a lot of images. This little beauty emerged a couple of days ago and cooperated for a shoot. I did do some stacks but in keeping with the out with the old theme I chose a single capture for this image. On single capture images sharp focus on the stigma ends is my primary goal. I also wanted to postiion the camera to get the pistil separated some from the body of the flower and also wanted to show some of the nice color and details on the back of the bloom.>=))>

Specific Feedback

Has the emergence of stacking rendered single capture obsolete? Do we expect full sharpness all over the flower?

Technical Details

Sony A7rIII
Sony FE 70-200 f2.8 GM-II @ 200mm
ISO 400, 1/20 @ f16

Critique Template

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2

Interesting question, Bill. Looking at this image, I love the in-focus areas, but my mind is asking for one of two things. Either front-to-back sharpness from stacking, or a narrower depth of field with consequently softer focus in the out-of-focus areas. That doesn’t necessarily mean that f/16 is dead, but it’s the way my mind is viewing this particular image.

3

Another beauty!! I go nuts with DOF decisions for macro and flora subjects. Soft focus and shallow DOF can be wonderful for flowers, but having the closest parts soft can present more problems than having the back parts soft. Sometimes I’ll do a stack and just use some of the frames.

In this one, I’m a little distracted by the OOF near petal because it is blocking my view of part of the in-focus stamens. A viewpoint a little to the left would probably have mitigated that.