Wide Angle Close-up Experiment

[Ed Vatza]

So we had a really great morning at Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve (New Hope, Pa.). While my wife went on a bird walk, I spent time experimenting with the Virginia Bluebells. the only hang up was that regardless how many clusters I looked at, they all seemed to have one or two flowers that were browning around the edges. So if you can, forget about the brown edges and tell me what you think of the image.

Anyway, I wanted to experiment with wide angle close-ups - something I had been reading about recently. This image was made with my Canon 30D and Sigma 10-20mm lens with the Canon 500D close-up lens/filter attached; all tripod mounted. I had the lens no more than 3" from the subject flower. I wanted the close-up of the single stem with the field as the background.

1/6 sec @ f/18; ISO 400; -1/3 EV; FL 20mm

[Randy Stout]

Ed:

Lovely colors in the flower. I am not certain how the extreme DOF of the wide angle works with macro where we often want tremendous isolation of subject from background. I am not a macro savvy person, but will be very curious to hear other input on this technique.

I may have to try it!

Thanks for sharing!

Randy

[Joseph Martines]

The background works for me.

What would happen with this image if you punched up the saturation a smidge?

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ed,
Very nice use of the WA. I like the way you have the main bluebell sharp with the OOF BG ones....that is one tough bloom and I feel you did pretty well. I would only recommend trying 2 things next time.......go a bit higher......to avoid the trees in the upper BG and just get the bluebell field in the BG.....or more interestingly enough.....go vert.....and include a bit more of the BG tree trunks as that is where they like to grow! Just a thought for next time out as the WA approach was a very nice choice here!

[Julie Kenward]

Neat angle and composition Ed. I agree with Roman - I think the comp would be better to have no trees or more trees. I also think the bluebells feel a little washed out - is that their true shade of blue? (We don't have bluebells in Missouri!) The greens look right so I'm guessing it's just the color of the flowers.

Overall, I like it - it almost has a fisheye look to it. It certainly brings the main flower into prominence nicely!

[Ed Vatza]

I appreciate all the comments, feedback and suggestions. As I said in the title, I was just experimenting a bit.

This particular wide angle close-up technique was something I had read about in Bryan Peterson's "Understanding Close-Up Photography". Like Bryan (probably the only thing I do like Bryan), I only used the Canon 500D with my 70-200 at 200mm as per Canon's instructions. It worked well that way. But Bryan wrote about how learned about using the 500D with a wide angle lens and the results. So I thought I'd try it. I kinda like the way it works. And surprisingly, no vignetting, at least not at 20mm.

I am particularly interested in using this technique with Lupines when we visit Acadia in June.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

[Ed Cordes]

Nice image Ed. I too think the trees need to go. If it were mine I would punch the saturation of the blues a bit and reduce the bright highlights.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Nice experiment Ed. I've been wanting to try a close-up filter on my wide-angle for quite a while. Will surely give it a try soon.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Ed, like the comp, agree with hise who would crop the trees out. Also agree on a saturation boost for flowers.

[dawn campbell]

Hi Ed,

These are such delightful little flowers. You've gotten alot of comments about the trees and saturation. One of the techniques you could try is to apply a couple of adjustment layers to darken and desaturate the background, masking out the flowers so they become more prominent than the background and don't fight against it. I'm not sure if I'm repeating what has been said here before, but instead of increasing saturation, you can try increasing the blacks in your flower to give it more punch with less risk of blowing out the blues--it may be just a matter of semantics, but using vibrancy instead of saturation is also usually a bit safer-and that assumes you are using Photoshop, ACR or Lightroom.

I just finished taking the Understanding Exposure class with Bryan Peterson and have been considering the 500 for just this use. I like the effect in your shot and will look forward to seeing more as you experiment.