Mini daisy

[Jerry van Dijk]

We recently bought these miniature gerbera daisies for our garden. The flowers are about 2 cm wide. I liked how the bright colors contrasted with the dark shades behind them. Point of self criticism: I'm bothered by the large OOF part of the flower center pointing towards us. I had no opportunity to get another frame stopped down because of the strong wind.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 200mm f/4 Micro, handheld, ISO-400, F/14, 1/250 sec, JPEG.
ACR5/CS4: I used recovery and fill light to repair the clipped pinks. Added a little sharpness and cloned out two spider threads. About 20% crop.

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Jerry, I really like the color contrast and tones of this. I see what you mean about the oof front petals. Perhaps a slightly different angle above the flower would have helped with this.

[Dave Leroy]

From my limited macro experience wind seems to be one of the biggest issues with macro when outdoors.

I also wonder about a different shooting angle not only to reduce the oof parts in the front, but also to place the flower on a bit of a diagonal in the frame. Both of which may be hard to do in the field and not lose the very nice bg.

Dave

[Anita Bower]

Unfortunately, the out of focus areas are the one's my eye goes to first. I have to search to find what is in focus. Maybe if the tips in the center circle were the focus it might work better. I have learned that large out of focus areas in the foreground are usually distracting. I imagine these little beauties are brightening up your garden.

[Mitch Haimov]

Nice subject, Jerry. I, too, am distracted by the OOF petals reaching towards us as they look like they should be sharp. Perhaps shooting at f/4 or f/5.6 and throwing them way OOF would have been a viable option since the wind prevented going to the other extreme. Then it would clearly be selective focus rather than nearly sharp and would have made the plane of sharp focus really stand out.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jerry. Nice colors on the flower and I like the dark - but not black - background. I agree with you about the OOF areas in the front of the flower. Like Anita, my eye goes directly to that area - expecting it to be sharp. :S3: You already have a number of good suggestions to consider. If these flowers are growing in your garden, you should be able to experiment with these suggestions and see what works best for you.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jerry,
Excellent self observation as well as additional ones above. Now you have a good idea of why I like shooting indooors! You should try experimenting with both flash and multiple reflectors......this can help quite a bit when doing work outdooors as the flash will generally freeze the movement......balancing the ambient and flash is the hard part but with digital.....easy enough to adjust.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi all, thanks for commenting! I find that the 200mm f/4 has very limited DOF, even for a macro lens. But I can stop down to f/32 (when the wind is gone!). I've been wanting to experiment with stacking images for quite some time, this may be a good time to do so.