POTD 31 August 2017 - Unknown Flower

[Mike Farley]

As some might be aware, for a while I have been experimenting with adapted lenses and this image is the result of seeing what my latest acquisition can do. It is a Pentax-M SMC 50 f/1.4, which for this shot was mounted on a Fuji X-E2. With the Fuji's crop factor, that gave it a field of view equivalent to 75mm on full frame.

My main interest in shooting these lenses is to see how they perform at their wider apertures. Wide open, this lens has a rather dreamy rendering, which can suit some subjects. For this image, I closed it down to f/2 which has improved matters a bit. Of course, being so close to the flower there is only a narrow plane of focus, which is what I wanted.

My ability to recognise flowers is not that well developed and I tend to call most things chrysanthemums. In this instance, even I can tell it is not one of those. If anyone knows what it is, do let me know.