Hypericum Flowers

Most of the year this is just a big, boring, green shrub. Then it flowers. And when low, evening sun catches the flowers they acquire a glorious glow which invites me to get the camera out. This year, I've experimented with a couple of lenses that are not my usual choices for garden flowers. The first shot is with the SMC 10-17mm fisheye at minimum focus distance, the second is with the M 200mm f4. Both with the K3iii.

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as usual.

1. SMC 10-17mm fisheye



2. M 200mm



Steve

I thought to myself, reading that, "the 200 is going to something special". And indeed it is. Bit of a beast deciding where to put the focus (you used the stamens) but the overall result, with that bokeh, is very very nice.

Thanks. I must admit to being pleasantly surprised by what the M 200mm can do with the right subject. PIty that the minimum focus distance is so long compared with more modern lenses, for that reason alone it won't be replacing my usual 'flower lenses'. But it's nice to have it on the shelf as an option .

Focus on the stamens is the manual focus default for me for a very good reason - it's the part of the flower that my deteriorating viewfinder eye usually finds easiest to recognise when it's in focus! Of course there's always the possibility of using live view and magnified image, but cataracts and a screen in far from optimal lighting don't seem to go well together.

Steve

Our Hypericum seems to have a pretty long flowering period so is often a victim of my photographic efforts - that first image is nicely unusual, capturing the shaded and sunlit flower heads side by side.

I quite often use a short (12mm) auto extension tube on various telephoto lenses to bring the minimum focus distance down whilst retaining the qualities of the lens