dahlia

[Ron Conlon]

An attempt at different lighting, emphasizing different aspects of these same dalhias. Rather than expand the reds, I wanted to emphasize the darkness of these blooms, so a low key look.
lightbox, remote flash, tripod, D5100 200mm Nikkor, 1/200s f6.3 ISO 100. 22 images to get through the whole focus range, manually moving the focus ring. The near and far focus points were monitored with Helicon remote tethered laptop, adjusted in ACR, stacked by PMax method in Zerene, some clean up in PS.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Very good DOF and fine detail in the dark petals - an example of a well rehearsed and executed technical exercise.

[Diane Miller]

You're exploring some new territory -- well done!

[Steve Maxson]

Another interesting take on lighting and technically very well done! If this were mine, I'd probably remove most of the tiny white specks - the ones that look like bits of debris (I suspect these are emphasized by the flash?) - to give the flower a cleaner appearance. :S3:

[Ron Conlon]

Thanks all.
Yes, Diane, trying to explore inside/outside my sphere, thanks.
Thanks, Steve. I did not relish the prospect of selecting/content-aware-deleting all the specks, but gave it a try, and then tried the spot healing brush for the first time. D'oh! Works like magic for spider web strands, too! Thanks for encouraging me to do better.