PAD 2

[Mike Farley]

Day 2 and this time I decided to do something where I have little experience - macro. After all, if the project is to succeed I am going to have to branch out so I might as well get stuck in early. I ended up experimenting both with a macro lens on my DSLR and the macro mode of a compact camera. In the end the DSLR shot got the nod as I felt it was a stronger composition.

This was definitely a difficult challenge. The stamens on the flower are very small and getting detail from them was difficult. The clarity control in Lightroom Raw processing helped, suggesting that part of the issue was due to low contrast - clarity works by boosting bthe mid tone contrast. I had to be careful with the control as I found that pushing it too far changed the colour in that part of the flower. Other than that there were the usual problems of limited depth of field and finding an interesting composition.

[davidc]

Good effort and good DOF, what lighting did you use for it?

[Mike Farley]

Good effort and good DOF, what lighting did you use for it?

I took the shot in my conservatory using just natural light, which was filtered through the neutral colour roof blinds for a soft, diffused effect. It was a dull day, so the exposure was 5 seconds at f/22, 100 ISO.