(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
A stack done in Helicon Focus of two gerberas - not sure how many images, as taken some years ago.
Very nice, Ian. I love the white on white. The position of the blooms couldn’t be placed any better, in my opinion. Very pleasing image.
Well done! I like the color, textures, and softness of the image.
I echo the others, Ian. Very nicely down with such a soft feel to the whole composition.
Ian, this is lovely. The overall brightness does a fine job of setting off the white flowers and the gentle yellows and greens. I see a stack artifact that I just learned about a week ago as I was shooting some white azaleas. There, I could see a brown stamen tip showing like a ghost through the white stem of the pistil in front of it. I’m thinking that I see that here in the yellow tint coming through the upper petals of the lower flower. I do think it’s a good effect here, adding some extra color and a sense of depth.
Wow, this is a wonderful image and the placement and angle of the flower heads are exceptional. However, the first thing I noticed was the orangish/yellow circular band ringing the lower flower upper petals, mostly from about 11 o’clock to about 6 o’clock. It’s a perfect half circle and I’m not sure what that is but Mark mentioned something about artifacts. I think the image would be stronger without it but it’s not a deal breaker with it. The rest of the image is so superb and you’ve processed this beautifully with the vignette around the bottom and the background tones are just right to set the flowers off. Excellent work!
Thank you @Mark_Seaver and @David_Haynes for pointing out the yellowish halo effect. I’ve simply adjusted the sat and exposure in that area to improve things I think, though there still seems to be a trace of a ring in that area - I guess it could well be an artefact.
Ian, here’s a highly cropped look at my first experience (about 2 weeks ago) with “burn through” in the whites of a Helicon stack. The artifact is circled in red.
Thanks. @Mark_Seaver, for posting that - I’ve not seen anything like it.
My main problem with Helicon stemmed from shooting at other apertures than f8 or f9 ( I read somewhere that those are the two you should choose ). At other apertures I tended to get circles of oof elements among the sharp ones.
Ian, I routinely use f/16 and even up to f/22 for stacks. If there are bright (or blown) whites, then Helicon’s “C” method expands the bright white areas significantly and they have to be fixed in retouch mode. If the number of crossing details is “low” then the “B” method seems to work better when the image is bright. While the “B” method used to add a ton of noise to any background, they seem to have fixed that.
