White Orchid

[Anita Bower]

I have been unsuccessful taking photos of Orchids at Longwood Gardens. A few days ago I had the opportunity to photograph this orchid grown by a friend. It was wonderful to be able to put a black background behind the flower and rotate the plant to get better angles. Plus, the orchid was in perfect condition!

Nikon D300, 105mm Sigma Macro lens, f29 (relative), 15 sec. (it was the end of the afternoon), ISO 160 (no idea why I had that setting), tripod, natural light, manual exposure. RAW conversion in Elements 7, PP in PS7. Rotated it a bit and cropped slightly.

[Joe Brown]

Beautiful image. You`ve capture excellent detail in the whites. Very nice composition and subject.
To tell you the truth, I`m surprised you did this well with your settings, very small aperture, long exposure and low ISO. I suspect you are beyond the sweet spot of the lens. You could have increased the shutter speed if you had used a lower f-number (10-13) and upped the ISO to 400 or more (I am not familiar with the ISO performance of your camera). I don`t believe there is significant increase in dof at this high f-number.

Joe

[Anita Bower]

Beautiful image. You`ve capture excellent detail in the whites. Very nice composition and subject.
To tell you the truth, I`m surprised you did this well with your settings, very small aperture, long exposure and low ISO. I suspect you are beyond the sweet spot of the lens. You could have increased the shutter speed if you had used a lower f-number (10-13) and upped the ISO to 400 or more (I am not familiar with the ISO performance of your camera). I don`t believe there is significant increase in dof at this high f-number.

Joe
Thanks for your comments. I think the sweet spot on this lens is f16. F29 is not as high as it sounds since it is the "relative" or "effective" f stop. Go here for an explanation: http://www.jeffree.co.uk/pages/macro-faqs.html

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Anita, another lovely flower. Did you do some cloning on this image? I see some diffuse white spots along the upper frame line in the UL corner and a vague copy of the edge of the UR petal about a centimeter to the right of the flower. May also be a reflection if you were shooting it in the window pane.

[Anita Bower]

Thank you Jerry for your good eyes! :eek: Yes, I cloned. Here is a clean (cleaner?) copy.

[Allen Sparks]

This is gorgeous...I think you nailed it!

[Julie Kenward]

Gees, Jerry you DO have good eyes...I had to look twice to see what you saw!

Anita, this is really beautiful. I think you found an excellent angle to show off the best features of the plant. The whites are spot on and the black BG adds real elegance and drama. I especially love the deep intense green of the foliage - just beautiful!

[Vida van der Walt]

Beautiful image Anita. Great angle, comp, lovely colours and the flower stands out so well against the dark bg. I wonder what it would look like if you sharpened it a little bit, but not a big issue.:)

[Mike Moats]

Hey Anita, really like the positioning and light. Good dof and whites look good.:)

[Nick Palmieri]

Wow very nice. Love the angle love the black BG. Nice DOF.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Anita, I still see some of those white spots. Maybe it's my monitor, maybe it's because I just got some new glasses :cool:! It helps when you move to get another angle on your monitor (if you have LCD). I've drawn some lines around the spots I still see.

[Anita Bower]

Hi Anita, I still see some of those white spots. Maybe it's my monitor, maybe it's because I just got some new glasses :cool:! It helps when you move to get another angle on your monitor (if you have LCD). I've drawn some lines around the spots I still see.

Argh! I'm the one needing new glasses. Thank you so much for circling the spots. I think I will need someone else to check on me when I do black BGs and clone black. :D