Oak Leaves

[Richard Lovison]

http://richardlovison.com/photos/leaves.jpg
© reserved 2009, Richard Lovison

These dried leaves were from a walk in the woods a couple of years ago. I usually pick up something from the ground on my hikes... a rock, piece of bark, leaves, etc..

Camera Info:
Olympus E-3; Vivitar Series 1 90-180mm Flat Field Zoom; 5 exposures using different focusing points at 1.3 sec, f11; ISO 100; manual exposure; natural light

RAW Conversion:
WB 4800K, +2 tint; contrast 0; saturation 0; sharpness -2; aRGB color space

Post Processing:
5 exposures combined in Helicon Focus using A method; curves adjustment; color adjustment in highlights; cropped; pre sharpened with dSLR Fractal Sharpen; resized; Nik output sharpening; converted to sRGB

[Gus Cobos]

Excellent composition, image and capture Richard...I like the high-key background the way it brings out and showcases your subject, the fine details and textures on the leaves are superb, with a very good color rendition...I can see the final results of your Helicon Focus program...How do you like it? :cool:

[Mike Moats]

Hey Richard, nice comp, good details, high key works well.

[Richard Lovison]

...I can see the final results of your Helicon Focus program...How do you like it? :cool:

Gus & Mike,

Thanks for your feedback. :)

I just started playing around with the demo version of Helicon Focus... I believe I have 30 days without any restrictions. So far I'm on the fence on whether I will purchase it or not. The program worked fine for this image though I had more difficulty with another. I took a shot of a flower nearly straight on using 10 exposures with the initial focus point at the outside of the petals and worked my way back toward where the flower met the stem. I had all kinds of trouble trying to hold detail in the interior where the stamen was. This was due to the outside petal edges being blurred and enlarged while the inside was in focus on a few of the images. This created unsightly artifacts. I tried method B as well as A with different radius and smoothing settings though still had problems. I did like the retouching feature where you can clone areas from one of the initial exposures to the finished merge. I was able to get rid of edge artifacts quite easily with that feature.

[Julie Kenward]

I'm not familiar with the software, Richard, but the image is beautiful. I especially like the worm imprint on the one upstanding leaf - that dark spot really captures my attention in a good way.

I like the highkey BG but bet it would also look just as shocking with black. Nicely done. Love the acorn on the bottom grounding the entire image.

[Bob Allen]

The "imprint" is the mine of a leaf-mining insect, probably the larva of a small moth. I too especially like the image even more with that mine.