Viburnum and snoot

[elf]

Well, I'm sure everyone knows what a viburnum is
This is manually stacked from 25 images.
35mm macro appx. 1:2
f11
1/80 sec



Larger version here: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v649/ ... 21937s.jpg

And here's the snoot:



There hasn't been much daylight for shooting lately and this is an attempt to get more light for macros. It just black foam board lined with aluminum foil and a piece of milk bottle plastic for a difuser. It fits snugly over the pop-up flash and is held in place with a rubber band.

[Ken Ramos]

Well I may be unknowning familiar with the flower, it is quite pretty though. I have also seen many devices for a flash diffuser for onboard pop ups, some mildly expensive while others are just down right cheap but all serve their purpose quite well actually. Good photograph and good thinking.

[LordV]

Lovely shot - I'm very familair with the flower- our next door neighbour has one right next to our fence and it keeps the few winter insects about fuelled up.
Like the DIY flash director/diffuser

Brian V.

[rjlittlefield]

Nice work, Ed!

I'm curious, though -- what was it about this shot that motivated manual stacking?

--Rik

[elf]

Nice work, Ed!

I'm curious, though -- what was it about this shot that motivated manual stacking?

--Rik

Sometimes the output from CombineZ5 looks a little harsh and I haven't progressed very far past the "Do Stack" stage with it.

[rjlittlefield]

Ahh! I know some magic that may help with that problem.

The standard CombineZM "Do Stack" macro has some added sharpening built in. If your images are sharp to begin with, the addition can be too much.

It's easy to get rid of. Just Macro | Edit -> Macros, click on Do Stack, click to select the line that says "Create a Highpass Filter", then click the Delete button 5 times. Click OK/Update, close the Edit Macros window, and you're good to go with no added sharpening or contrast adjustment.

I normally get rid of Balance Colour and Brightness too. If your lighting is uniform from frame to frame you don't need that command, and once in a while it'll actually throw things off a bit.

--Rik

[elf]

Well that certainly cured the sharpening/contrast problem. Unfortunately it cured it a little too well and the image turned out quite soft. I'll have to play with the settings to see if there's a happy medium

[rjlittlefield]

...play with the settings to see if there's a happy medium...

Either that or sharpen as postprocessing in Photoshop where you can see directly what you're getting.

CombineZM uses different math, but the results are very close to what you get from Photoshop's unsharp mask filter.

If you do a lot of the same thing, then tuning CombineZM will save some repetitive work; if you do a lot of different things, it's faster to tweak in Photoshop.

--Rik

[JoanYoung]

Beautiful pic Ed.

[cactuspic]

Lovely image, Ed

Irwin

[Planapo]

Thanks for the nice Viburnum picture, Ed. And the flash snoot is interesting too, I wish I was more skilled in DIY.

Actually, this Viburnum is bringing back old memories to me as we had large bushes of those plants around the house where I once lived as a kid with my family. They were blossoming from late November to early April and the first bees in spring were very frequent visitors of the flowers.

BTW, if anyone is interested, I think the Viburnum is Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'. (At least these were the very similar, if not the same ones we had.)
And if one has access to a plant one can propagate it quite easily as tip layers or off-shoots.

Cheers,
Betty

[beetleman]

A Classic case of “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” Both pictures are beautiful

[cactuspic]

Very well done, Ed.