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View Full Version : Tremella mesenterica



Jerry van Dijk
01-03-2012, 04:25 PM
I ent out to the woods the other day for some bird photography, but there were so many people walking their dogs that the birds hardly showed themselves. I did find this curious and colorful fungus, which stood out clearly from its gloomy surroudings. Its common name is Golden jelly fungus, which seems like an accurate description :S3:. The small OOF orange fungus is a younger, fresher specimen, just starting to grow.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 200mm Micro f4D IF-ED, handheld, ISO-1600, f/5.6, 1/125 sec.
ACR6.3/CS5, levels, sharpness, NR.

Steve Maxson
01-05-2012, 01:29 PM
Hi Jerry. I like the variety one finds in fungi and some, like this one, are very colorful. It really does look like a glistening blob of golden jelly. :S3: Nice comp and good sharpness within your DOF. In an ideal world, I would like a little more DOF on the main fungus to get the back section sharp, but at ISO 1600 and hh, you didn't have much wiggle room to increase your f/stop. The IQ looks good for ISO 1600. Well done!

Jerry van Dijk
01-06-2012, 10:43 AM
Hi Steve, I see your point about the DOF. I think upping to ISO 3200 would be pushing my luck! Despite it's reputation of being a low noise camera, the D7000 produced a considerable amount of fine grained noise in this image (this happens occasionally, not always at these ISO levels), but the NR functions in ACR and CS5 had no problem in removing it without deteriorating IQ too much.
I do think that having part of the mushroom OOF adds a sense of depth and of the 3D structure of the mushroom.

Ken Childs
01-07-2012, 11:53 AM
Jerry, you did a nice job with a very unusual subject. I really like the comp and although a bit more DOF would have been nice, I do like this as presented. If this were mine, I'd darken it with SH....there's a lot of detail on the fungus that's being hidden by the brightness. There's something weird going on in the upper right but I can quite explain what it is. It draws my eye to that area but when I look closely at that area, I can't say exactly what it is that is drawing my eye. Whatever it is, you might try adding some lens blur to that area. I just tried that and it fixed whatever it was that was giving me trouble.

Jerry van Dijk
01-07-2012, 03:55 PM
Hi Ken, there certainly was more detail hiding in the highlights. Here's a repost with 6% highlights correction. I also cloned out an OOF twig in the UR, which I suspected of drawing your eye...
This 'shroom is actually quite common in The Netherlands, but I've never seen one hanging down so nicely from a branch. I also got lucky that this was quite a fresh specimen, as they have a tendency to get gooey quite quickly......

Adrian David
01-08-2012, 04:07 AM
Nice capture ! Very interesting mushroom....never seen one before....I like the translucent color wit all those shades of yellow.