Ornamental Grass Flower

Davids · Post by **Davids** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 3:05 pm

This was my first go at shooting in raw and stacking tiffs. Normally I just use the jpegs straight from the camera.

This is an ornamental grass flower at 4x. I've realized I really need to start using a flash rather than continuous light as I'm getting too much movement.

Nikon Plan Apo 4x/0.20 Fuji x-t1.

ChrisR · Post by **ChrisR** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:31 pm

That's quite some flower. Grass!
Did you find the Raw route worthwhile?

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Fri Jul 28, 2017 5:37 pm

The image is very nice but maybe you have used too high a sharpening or saturation setting or something like that. It looks very contrasty.

Davids · Post by **Davids** » Sat Jul 29, 2017 5:20 am

Lou - Yes, definitely not my best editing work. I think it was a combination of lighting being a bit too hard, trying to utilize a new editing plug-in (Nik collection in lightroom), and I'm still unsure how to best resize an image for this forum.

Chris-Honestly, I couldn't really tell much of a difference. It's most likely because my editing skills are rudimentary. But I'll continue using Raw files for now to get the hang of it.
And yes, grass flowers really are quite spectacular...up close.

Lou Jost · Post by **Lou Jost** » Sat Jul 29, 2017 6:09 am

For me the main advantages of using RAW files are:
1. Much greater dynamic range; you can often recover blown highlights by lowering the white level or the highlights level or the exposure level or contrast level, or all four.
2. You can control the amount of pre-stack sharpening that gets applied to the images. Jpgs always sharpen the images, sometimes too much, which increases the noisiness of PMax stacks.
3. More effective removal of CA before stacking, rather than after.