lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Both versions of photograph created from a 6 frame focus stack.

Cactus Flower Focus Stack

(Download)

B&W Conversion with Ps CS6

(Download)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Beautiful

dck22

Well done.

suntouched Loc: Sierra Vista AZ

Beautiful!

photodoc16

Lamiaceae,
Very striking and beautiful. 2 Technique questions.
Your method for background blackness please.
Also, the depth of your focus seems large for only 6 sections. Any technical issues to share like spacing, etc.
Thank you very much.
Photodoc16

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

1. It was shot indoors on a Black Cloth. I do that often. With a little Photoshop touch-up.

2. I thought so too (good DoF). Worked better than I figured it would. And considering one of the shots could have been left out of the stack since it was completely well out of focus. Tripod; I shot everything at f/8 with a Prime Normal 50mm f/1.7 Lens. I think f/8 was the trick. It was nowhere close to being an actual macro, the flower is rather large. I think the flower used only 2/3 of the frame as I planned to change it from landscape to portrait.

For what it is worth, I partially "processed" the selected sequential RAW images for stacking with ACR, using my usual settings for sharpness, contrast, exposure, WB, etc. Then just clicked Done. Then I created the stack with Ps CS6 (CC would be the same), and fine tuned the final image and cropped. The B&W was created by playing with the Color Channel sliders in Convert to B&W. I virtually never just De-colorize an image.

I also shot some single images at f/16. They are pretty nice too. I may try this all again with a 50mm or 100mm Macro lens, and include some detail macro shots as stacks.

kpmac Loc: Ragley, La

Nicely done.

Cwilson341 Loc: Central Florida

That is an amazing flower shot and stacking was an excellent idea. It deserves to be sharp throughout!

photodoc16

Thank you very much for your very helpful answers. It is nice to be part of a group that so generously shares it's technical knowledge.
Photodoc16

angler Loc: StHelens England

Lovely shots.

mffox Loc: Avon, CT

WOW! Can you share your technique for getting the black background?
Mark

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

I had answered that for someone else above. But, here you go.

It was shot indoors on a Black Cloth, flower in a vase. I do that often. With a little Photoshop touch-up.

Also, what I did not specify before is a trick that helps especially with eliminating the texture of the cloth (if it show at all) is: in Photoshop go to Image > Adjustments > Exposure >> tweak the OFFSET to the negative by a tiny amount. I find often as little as -0.0248 to -0.0011 is enough! But be careful Black can easily get blocked up with no detail in other parts of the image. You only want to take say Charcoal Grey to Black this way.

sailorsmom Loc: Souderton, PA

Beautiful images, Mike!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Thanks everyone for looking.

CHRISTINA71 Loc: Kentucky

WOW!!!! BEAUTIFUL!!! I love it!!!