Wild Onion

[Michael Lloyd]

Around here they call the plant that produces this tiny flower a wild onion. I have no idea what it is. It comes up after rainfall. We finally received some rain over the last few days. It's been a long dry summer. This is one of two images. The second image was shot at 1/32 flash power and it needed about 1 stop more in ACR for proper exposure. 1/16th power was almost perfect.

EOS 1DsMKII manual
MP65E. Tripod. RRS macro rails.
MR-14EX Ring Flash. Manual 1/16th power

ISO 100
1/40s @f11

[Anita Bower]

I'm not familiar with this tiny flower. I like the subtle colors of the pale yellow and the white against the darker BG. Nice angle of the flower stem coming into the frame. The flower looks out of focus to me, which I don't understand since you used flash, tripod and f11. I would like to see either the entire flower, or less of it. Look forward to seeing more of your images.

[Nick Palmieri]

Nice flower. It looks a little soft to me. Where is the focus point? BG is very nice.

[Michael Lloyd]

The MP65E has razor sharp depth of field even at f11. Such is the price you pay for a macro range of of up to 5:1.

The focus point is pretty clear on the large version. Its the tip of the rightmost stamen closest to the camera. There is a distinct line of sharpness across the image. I didn't do much in the way of sharpening because I liked the soft "glowy" feel of the image.

Here's one with all of the sharpening tools in my action turned on. It's not a lot better. When the focal point DOF is almost equivalent to a grain of pollen there isn't a lot one can do about it though I could have stopped down a little more and had a little more definition.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Michael, I have to admit my first reaction was like Anita and Nick, it looks soft on focus. I know there are small parts of the stamen in good focus but I would stop the lens down more for some extra DOF.

[Julie Kenward]

I agree with Mike, although I also think if you had put the focal point more at the base of all the stamen as a single unit it would have anchored those soft petals a bit more. Excellent work on the whites BTW. For me, the comp feels top heavy - I do like the close crop of the flower but feel the stem is too long. I'd take some off the bottom of the frame or go for a horizontal on this one.

[Michael Lloyd]

I reshot the image at f16 but I don't really like it as well (possibly because I can see both full sized TIF files). Personal preference I guess... but to me it's too sharp and I suspect still won't be sharp enough to others. The MP65E isn't very forgiving. This was shot at 1:1. The MP65E is not an AF lens. It's focused by moving the camera / lens. Some focusing can be achieved by changing the ratio but there is limited control doing that and if you start at 1:1, composition is affected as you increase the ratio (up to 5:1).