The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I just have one these blooming so far, with a couple more whose leaves have been nibbled (along with a Soap Plant I’m trying to protect). It’s on a steep hillside so I was able to splay out the legs of my smaller tripod and shoot it from below. (While I was splayed out with toes dug in to prevent sliding down.) And it’s located in between two houses the Bluebirds are checking out, so after two quick sessions the last few days, I’ll avoid it. This is a focus stack with an ugly BG so I blurred it. This is a fresh bloom – the next day the petals had curled back more attractively.
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome.
Technical Details
In LR, just a little tonal punch as it was in the shade. A stack of about 10-15 into Zerene Stacker. The result into PS to select the flower and blur the BG. Topaz Denoise and a crop to about 50%.
“We do not take pictures with our cameras, but with our hearts and minds,”~ Arnold Newman
Sent from my iPhone
| Diane Miller Nightscape & Astro Moderator March 21 |
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Critique Style Requested:Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I just have one these blooming so far, with a couple more whose leaves have been nibbled (along with a Soap Plant I’m trying to protect). It’s on a steep hillside so I was able to splay out the legs of my smaller tripod and shoot it from below. (While I was splayed out with toes dug in to prevent sliding down.) And it’s located in between two houses the Bluebirds are checking out, so after two quick sessions the last few days, I’ll avoid it. This is a focus stack with an ugly BG so I blurred it. This is a fresh bloom – the next day the petals had curled back more attractively.
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome.
Technical Details
In LR, just a little tonal punch as it was in the shade. A stack of about 10-15 into Zerene Stacker. The result into PS to select the flower and blur the BG. Topaz Denoise and a crop to about 50%.
Thanks, @Susanna_Euston – and wonderful to see you back here!! I think you’re seeing the curving tip of one of the petals. It isn’t lovely and I thought about pruning it. Thanks for the nudge – I’ll do a RP in a minute.
And, @Susanna_Euston I forgot to comment on stacking software. PS will do a decent job if there are no significant overlaps – in other words, if you are shooting a surface receding from the camera, like aiming at a tabletop from above at an angle – or with many landscapes – but if you have elements sticking out from a BG, like a Hibiscus flower with a petal well behind the stamen, PS can’t handle that. You need Zerene or Helicon Focus. I don’t even remember why I chose Zerene (WAY back in the last century), and don’t know if Helicon is any easier to use, but I think both do an equally good job. Zerene has some advanced features that I don’t use. Zerene returns a TIFF (16 bit) so it is necessary to do the desired tonal adjustments to the raw source files first. Helicon returns a DNG which is not strictly a raw file but it has more tonal overhead than the TIFF and LR will treat it as a raw file, giving you more tonal recovery after the fact than the TIFF will. That is an interesting feature and I need to check out a demo sometime. Both have a plugin that gives a very easy round trip from Lightroom.
Beautiful job on this one, Diane. Pruning that stray petal worked very well and it’s not missed at all.
The Helicon vs. Zerene is interesting. I was doing several stacks this morning in Helicon and I’d always wondered if the two used pretty much the same algorithms under different names. Then I noticed that In Helicon one of the methods is called “Depth Map” and the other is called “Pyramid” so I’m thinking that’s pretty much the same thing as the D and P in Zerene. I have and have used both and I can’t recall why I quit using Zerene.
Yes, Zerene uses PMax and DMap. I got a headache trying to find out the difference, but they give slightly different results. I run both and the choose the best one, often stacking them on PS and masking to the best of each. PMax usually has more fine-grained noise.
I neglected to say above, I have read that since the .dng returned by Helicon is not a true raw file you can’t use LR’s denoise on it.
Ah, splendid image (better with the crazy petal pruned away!). Nice work with the Focus Stacking… And am personally happy to see the American Erythronium in full splendor, after seeing so many dens-canis on this side of the Pond…
Diane: The original was pretty good but just a tiny bit foul while the repost is a fair ball homer. Good effort in the capture and the final result. Most excellent. >=))>
Oooh shades of things to come! Our trouts are still underground, although in a month or so they will be up, maybe 3 weeks. You’ve isolated this one so nicely and I like the angle, like a diving falcon. I love whatever the white structure in the middle is - all curly. The re-edit with the petal cloned out looks terrific and I wouldn’t have guessed you did it since they are so curly at this point in the blooming.
I also use Zerene and despite its terribly dated interface, like it just fine. One advanced feature I do use is slabbing when I have more than say 20 or so source images to stack. It basically makes mini stacks automatically and then you stack those for the final image. You do have to re-import them as source images for that, but then you only have a handful to search through for retouching. Much easier and when I did my 90+ image stack of a Spring Peeper resting in a Dahlia, it was not a frustrating struggle.
Lovely shot of what we call the fawn lily (ours are mauve and come after 3-4 weeks). I might be tempted to remove the pale patch in the ULC, but that’s very minor! I hope you can get a shot of one with the petals curled back more to resemble a Turk’s cap. But this is top notch.
beautiful image. The repost is a little clearer. I think you did a good job with the stack. I also use Zerene and recently fooled around with some flowers but I never got what I wanted. There’s always time in the future.
Thanks, @Kris_Smith , @Mike_Friel and @David_Schoen ! The petals did curl back the next day but the Bluebirds were on station watching both houses and I had panicked them the day before so decided they got preference. Mike, these must be lovely in mauve – hope we get a chance to see some!
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