Non-stacked flowers, March 2017

[GardenersHelper]

Here is another recently processed set from my backlog. I am posting them in relation to an interesting comment in this thread about the impact of focus stacking. In contrast to those images, rather than being focus stacked, these are all single-capture images.

Like the other set these were captured hand-held using natural light with a micro four thirds Panasonic G80. Unlike the other set these were captured using a telezoom lens with a mild Canon 500D close-up lens rather than the macro lens used for the linked set, and these were captured and processed from raw rather than being captured as video and processed from JPEG as in the linked set.

These images were processed in DXO PhotoLab, Silkypix, Lightroom and, for the first six, Topaz DeNoise AI.

These images are taken from this album at Flickr which contains 1300 pixel high versions of these and the other images from the session.

#1

1607 07 2017_03_11 P1300481_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#2

1607 08 2017_03_11 P1300502_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#3

1607 09 2017_03_11 P1300516_PLab3 LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#4

1607 14 2017_03_11 P1300567_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#5

1607 17 2017_03_11 P1300590_PLab3 SP9-Edit LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#6

1607 18 2017_03_11 P1300601_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-DNAI by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#7

1607 19 2017_03_11 P1300618_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-2 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

#8

1607 20 2017_03_11 P1300630_PLab3 SP9 LR 1300h-2 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

 

[reheat module]

Following on from your earlier stacking images, these are also excellent.
Colour and lighting are brought out extremely well with your style in pp.

 

[lightshipman]

Nice set of images

 

[Stumpy]

Second one really "Pops". Lovely lighting on them all. Did you use any fill or a reflector?
Makes me wish I could get out and down, oh well.

 

[GardenersHelper]

Following on from your earlier stacking images, these are also excellent.
Colour and lighting are brought out extremely well with your style in pp.

Thanks Paul.

Nice set of images

Thanks Andrew.

Second one really "Pops". Lovely lighting on them all.

Thank you Paul, I'm interested in what you say about the second one, as it has a rather busy background. Personally, rather than an extremely plain background like a lot of people favour (even putting a plain board behind the subject in some cases), I quite like stuff going on in the background if it seems to complement, or at least not fight with, the subject. In this case though I wondered whether to use this image or not because while the subject seemed to come out quite interesting and a bit striking, the background seemed a bit too busy and high contrast for comfort. While I like something in the background, I like it to be fairly muted. So I'm very interested that you picked out that particular one. Once again I am struck by how differently we all see images, and what we notice most about them.

Did you use any fill or a reflector?

No. I never use a reflector and I have used fill perhaps twice in the past three years (a guess, but you get the idea). I expose for highlights (which can make some of my images look rather dark out of the camera) and raise the overall level of brightness in post processing, sometimes also adjusting the relative brightness of different areas of the image.

I looked through the ones posted here but as far as brightness goes it turns out that they all had only global adjustments, so I can't show an example from these of the sort of local brightness adjustments that I sometimes do. Here are a couple of examples which illustrate global brightness adjustments though. On the left is the JPEG embedded in the raw file (what the out of the camera JPEG would have looked like had I been shooting JPEG) and on the right the processed raw version that I posted here. I did do some local adjustments to these, but rather than being brightness adjustments these were spotting/cloning (which I've just noticed I didn't finish off cleanly along the bottom left edge of the second one).


Before, After post processing - Example 1 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


Before, After post processing - Example 2 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

Makes me wish I could get out and down, oh well.

That sounds frustrating. I'm sorry to hear that.