Dutchman's Breeches

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Spring ephemeral season is in full swing so I’ve been cruising natural areas for wildflowers. This is a 30 shot stack of Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) that gets most of the flowers sharp. This cluster has touches of pink, which is considered rare.

Technical Details

R5, 180 mm macro, 1/800 s, f/6.3, iso 400, tripod. You may notice some mottling in the background, which occurs when using the B (depth map) method in Helicon Focus on a stack where the background is moving or the light is changing.

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Stunning, Mark. Takes my breath away. The detail in the flowers is incredible and the soft pink coloring amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Beautiful, Mark. I love the angle you chose and the light and detail are excellent. Was there any reason you didn’t go all the way and catch the back lobe on the far flower? It looks fine soft.

Great job with this - a VERY tough flower to shoot well. So deep and broad and they wave around in the least breeze. I can’t wait for them to show up here, maybe in a month or two. I’ve never seen the pink bits before so I agree that it is probably a rare and possibly localized phenomenon.

180 to 200mm macro lenses provide some of the best optics for macro-photography and this one is darn good. The BG is colorful, but not overpowering and you have 99% of the flowers sharply focused. Lighting is pretty good with soft shadows too. First flower is slightly OOF on its back side but not a fatal flaw for the comp. Looks fine as presented…Jim

@Dennis_Plank the day had a mostly steady breeze, so this was taken in 10 shot increments when things were nearly still. My goal was always to get the tip of the stem on the right sharp so I stopped when that occurred.

@Jim_Zablotny, agree about the value of a ~200 mm lens for macro (especially for smaller insects)…seems like Canon has abandoned such lenses as they no longer make the one used here and don’t seem interested in a new version for the R series cameras. This view could have been done with a 100 mm lens, but the background would have been sharper.

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