African violet

[Ron Conlon]

The long winter has me buying house plants again. Hopefully I have learned how not to keep the African Violet alive.
After many portraits of this scape, and a week or too, I decided I liked the back view best.
This was made in similar fashion to many of my other recent submissions, a stack in a light box with a flash.
This one was D800E tethered to a laptop and 46 frames acquired with Helicon Remote. Each shot is 200mm f/8 1/200.
The frames were composited into a single photo with Zerene Stacker.

[Diane Miller]

The detail here is just amazing!! I love the composition and soft colors.

I need to get Helicon Remote. Aside from macro, I've been looking for the best way to do a huge exposure bracket for the 2017 total solar eclipse (without touching the camera, which will be tracking the sun) and this may just be the answer! Even for the short time involved, I don't want to have to rely on aligning any more than necessary. The detail in the corona will cover a huge exposure range from the center out, and there is amazing detail to be found.

[Ron Conlon]

Thanks Diane. I love to work tethered, and wish I could use it in all circumstances because of the precise control. I find myself dreaming of new applications. Come spring I will give some of them a go. Planning for 2017 is on a longer timescale yet!

[Don Railton]

Stunning detail Ron...! this almost prevented me from posting but I have decided to do it anyway... There is One little section not absolutely perfect like the remainder but its a stunning image all the same..

regards

DON

[Ron Conlon]

Thanks, Diane and Don. The nearest petal edge (at about 11 o'clock) is oof--is that the one little section?

[Don Railton]

Yep, that's it Ron..

[Anita Bower]

Your approach results in stunning detail! Wow! Impressive. I especially like all the little hairs on the edges of the petals, which stand out against that black bg. I look forward to seeing more photos taken this way.

[Enrique Patino]

Great image, details and color

I played with Zerene Stacker (free trial) and may just have to buy a license for it

[Jonathan Ashton]

That is a very eye catching image, wonderful detail and I agree the reverse view is more interesting sometimes.

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Ron,
Love the detail you captured and the tones are nice. Lovely image.
Allen

[Andre van As]

A very nice rendering Ron with excellent detail. Do you process the PMax or DMap ZS output image into your final PS (or other editor) image that you publish. I have found that the DMap output gives very nice detail but is not quite harsh and is smoother than the PMax output. I also wonder if the flash you use is giving the hardness of the light? This image would improve dramatically if you could soften the light somewhat. nevertheless a very good image.

Regards

Andre

[Ron Conlon]

All, thanks...
Andre, I almost always use PMax, as this one is. And I use the UDR version of the PMax output, otherwise Zerene interprets the black background as deep shadow and tries to extract detail out of it.
The "harshness" isn't from lighting, which would manifest as shadows. I use a lightbox and the pre-stacked images have soft, even light.
The hard look is from PMax, which emphasizes or over-emphasizes detail. I don't know if it is akin to sharpening, but the fact that PMax non-UDR will try to generate a range of values of the black background is illustrative--I have heard Diane Miller refer to tone-mapping by the software but I don't know enough about the technical details to offer an opinion or insight.
Sometimes, I like the smoother effects from the DMap--for example a stack of a food item looks incredibly unappetizing if you use PMax.
DMap does a poor job with fine hairs, and I would spend all my time retouching, which I hate.
I will look into reducing the (default) sharpening and contrast on the starting files, and see if that improves it. Thanks for the criticique.

[Ron Conlon]

Here is a repost following an attempt to soften the look. I prevented Adobe Camera Raw from applying the default sharpening to the RAW files, applied a curve to lessen the constrast very slightly and redid the stack (PMax again). I think it helped reduce the surreal hardness.