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Archive 2014 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked

  
 
dhachey
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Spring has finally arrived in the Midwest, so going with that spirit I wanted to shoot some Easter Flowers I found at the local garden store. These images were shot with a Canon EF 100mm F2.8L or a 24-70mm F2.8L II with either a 1Dx or 5DIII. Multiple shots were taken (10-60) through the image using Helicon Remote and reassembled with Helicon Focus, before final editing in LR5 and PS CC. The flowers were placed on a black velvet background and illuminated with two LED arrays set at 45 deg to the camera.

Hope this puts everyone in a Spring-like mood <grin>.

Cheers, …Dave



© dhachey 2014

Easter Lily #1





© dhachey 2014

Easter Lily #2





© dhachey 2014

Easter Lily Macro





© dhachey 2014

After Eight Oriental Lily #1





© dhachey 2014

After Eight Oriental Lily #2



Edited on Apr 13, 2014 at 10:05 PM · View previous versions



Apr 13, 2014 at 04:55 PM
dhachey
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Two more...



© dhachey 2013






Orchid #1



Edited on Apr 13, 2014 at 05:09 PM · View previous versions



Apr 13, 2014 at 04:58 PM
birdied
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Gorgeous work 3, 5 and 6 are my favorites.

Birdie




Apr 13, 2014 at 05:03 PM
dhachey
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


birdied wrote:
Gorgeous work 3, 5 and 6 are my favorites.

Birdie



Thanks Birdie, just added one more (an orchid).



Apr 13, 2014 at 05:10 PM
kyelmore
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Those look really great. I've wanted to do some focus stacking work, or try it at least on snake photographs.
I know how to take the photographs to do it, but I don't know how to combine them later. I only have Photoshop 7 at the moment, not sure if it has the capability.

Can you recommend a tutorial site on how to combine the photos?

Edit: Nevermind, I see you posted the software you used. I'll have to check it out. I don't use any autofocus lenses, so I don't think the Helicon remote will help me any.



Apr 13, 2014 at 05:42 PM
braam
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Wow! outstanding work on get DOF front to back. TFS.


Apr 13, 2014 at 05:54 PM
KCollett
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Quite an enjoyable set. Well done. I especially like the last image.


Apr 13, 2014 at 08:07 PM
James McQueen
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Wow .... excellent images.

- Jim



Apr 13, 2014 at 08:21 PM
dhachey
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked




James McQueen wrote:
Wow .... excellent images.

- Jim


Thanks Jim. I've been meaning to shoot something like this for a while, but work and travel always seem to get in the way. I'll post more as I find suitable subject material. Because I shot a lot of images to build the DOF map, it maybe interesting to pull out a few and aim for selective focus.

Cheers, ...Dave



Apr 14, 2014 at 07:50 AM
Danpbphoto
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Dave, glorious compositions!
Color, bg, exposure, focus.....GREAT!!!
Happy Easter!
Dan



Apr 14, 2014 at 08:32 AM
dhachey
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked




Danpbphoto wrote:
Dave, glorious compositions!
Color, bg, exposure, focus.....GREAT!!!
Happy Easter!
Dan


Thanks Dan. Doing the high DOF work was an interesting diversion and great fun, but now back to the wildlife work that's filling my server and awaiting processing.

...Dave



Apr 14, 2014 at 10:23 AM
ray_hennessy
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Beautiful lighting on all of these photos. I really love 2 & 3 but they are all really nice to look at, and keep looking at.


Apr 14, 2014 at 10:49 AM
martines34
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


These are all beautiful.

Thanks loads for sharing.



Apr 14, 2014 at 11:29 AM
gregfountain
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Hi Dave,

I think you have some nice shots here! I'm not completely clear why you chose focus stacking for most of these, with the exception of the lily close-up. None-the-less, I like #2 best as it has the best exposure on the white petals, but if you could clone out the spectral highlights on the glass vase, I think it would improve. I like composition of #1, but some of the petals have some blown highlights.....

I like the stargazers, but I think the compositions need some more thought. Was there any room in your crops to add more space above, and to the left, to give them more space and make them less centered?

Overall, I think you did a really nice job with these!

-Greg



Apr 14, 2014 at 12:43 PM
Ted ellis
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


KCollett wrote:
Quite an enjoyable set. Well done. I especially like the last image.


Wow....me too

Ted



Apr 14, 2014 at 12:50 PM
surfnron
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Very nicely done with 4 my pick Dave. Some of the whites look blown on my monitor though ~ Ron


Apr 14, 2014 at 09:33 PM
Jonathan Huynh
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Very captures.


Apr 14, 2014 at 10:09 PM
dhachey
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


surfnron wrote:
Very nicely done with 4 my pick Dave. Some of the whites look blown on my monitor though ~ Ron


Hi Ron;

Yes, unfortunately some of the images are right on the edge for exposure. I went back to the original shots that made up the stack, and a few were blown out. Helicon Focus creates 16 bit TIFF files, so I don't think it's a software artifact. This was my first try using this technique, so I clearly need some more practice.

…Dave



Apr 14, 2014 at 10:28 PM
dhachey
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


gregfountain wrote:
Hi Dave,

I think you have some nice shots here! I'm not completely clear why you chose focus stacking for most of these, with the exception of the lily close-up. None-the-less, I like #2 best as it has the best exposure on the white petals, but if you could clone out the spectral highlights on the glass vase, I think it would improve. I like composition of #1, but some of the petals have some blown highlights.....

I like the stargazers, but I think the compositions need some more thought. Was there any room in your crops to add more space above,
...Show more

Hi Greg.

The main reason I used Z-stacks was DOF, otherwise I would have needed F22 or more for some of the images. The final image of the orchid was a single shot at F22, and if you look closely at the original you can see an overall softness due to diffraction. The orchid also had the shallowest depth, so stacking wasn't required. These were experimental images to try out focus stacking, and they came out better than I expected. Unfortunately some of the images are slightly blown out on the highlights, I should have caught that. Mea culpa.

…Dave



Apr 14, 2014 at 10:39 PM
shymon
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Easter Flowers - Focus Stacked


Great work. If I had to pick just one it would be the Easter Lily macro. But they're all great. And thank you for the explanation about how you shot and processed them. Sounds like a lot of work and it paid off.


Apr 15, 2014 at 01:00 AM





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