Crocus pollen

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:40 am

It's that time of year... a "rite of spring". The crocus popped out one sunny day and then got hammered flat by some intense rain the next. Found a couple of shots anyway.

MM-11/Oly hybrid scope, Olympus LMPLFLN 5/0.15, LED lights, Canon T3i

MM-11/Oly hybrid scope, Olympus LMPLFLN 20/0.40, LED lights, Canon T3i

MM-11/Oly hybrid scope, Olympus LMPLFLN 50/0.50, LED lights, Canon T3i

Jacek · Post by **Jacek** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 12:50 am

Mega super !!!

Gyrosigma · Post by **Gyrosigma** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 2:07 am

Hi Charles,
Difficult to follow you,
you place the bar, too high

great shots again

regards

Dominique

Saul · Post by **Saul** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 7:47 am

Hard to comment. Incredible... 2nd is a favorite.

piermicro · Post by **piermicro** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 10:54 am

Very,very,very nice.
Incredible photo.

JH · Post by JH » Mon Feb 15, 2016 11:12 am

Nice!

Olympusman · Post by **Olympusman** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 3:51 pm

Very nice. We are a long way from seeing any crocus here in Pennsylvania.

Mike

zzffnn · Post by **zzffnn** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 9:27 pm

Love them all! Especially the second one!! Thank you!

Sumguy01 · Post by **Sumguy01** » Mon Feb 15, 2016 11:50 pm

Very nice.
Amazing detail.
Thanks for sharing.

henrikfoto · Post by **henrikfoto** » Tue Feb 16, 2016 12:56 am

Fantastic pictures!!
Can you tell us how you made the first one?
I guess it is a huge number of shots in a stack?
Just brightfield or some special tecniques?
And how do you get the amazing colours?

fonakta · Post by **fonakta** » Tue Feb 16, 2016 1:13 am

Second is like a landscape from an alien planet, beautyful!

carlos.uruguay · Post by **carlos.uruguay** » Tue Feb 16, 2016 5:40 am

A beauty!!! surely deserves an award

Charles Krebs · Post by **Charles Krebs** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:43 pm

Thanks all for the kind remarks!

henrikfoto

Can you tell us how you made the first one?
I guess it is a huge number of shots in a stack?
Just brightfield or some special tecniques?
And how do you get the amazing colours?

The first is from a stack of 48 images. I light these "externally" using three of the LED lights I made up a while ago. Below is a very quick-and-dirty photo of the setup (in this shot I have part of a Camellia flower on the stage, but it is the same arrangement). In the upper left is the "main" light (diffuser snapped into reflector). The upper right is a "fill" light, directed through a curved section of a yogurt container placed just to the right of the subject. The intensity and angle of these lights is carefully adjusted to give the effect I like.

Under the stage I sometimes use another light which is reflected upward using one of those cheap "right angle mirror" ("spy") camera lens adapters. (This was done in Photo #3). By varying the intensity of this lower light I can increase or decrease the amount of "backlighting".

The lights were made using LEDs with a very high CRI (97)... this might help with the color rendition (but before I made these lights it really didn't seem hard to get attractive color with the Ikea lights). Before taking pictures I set a "custom white balance" in the camera by photographing a white board placed in the subject position. It is sometimes tricky to get good range of tonalities in yellow subjects. So I try not to light them too "flat", and always check the RGB histogram to be sure I am not blowing out the red channel.

houstontx · Post by **houstontx** » Fri Feb 19, 2016 8:44 pm

2nd pic looks straight from Solaris

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069293/

http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/u ... cean_1.jpg

RogelioMoreno · Post by **RogelioMoreno** » Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:09 am

Charlie,

Wow, all lovely!

Rogelio

Crocus pollen

Crocus pollen

Crocus pollen

How?