Little Dying Flower

This morning, I decided to see whether the high mag macro kit (using the Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x macro) could be set up in the spare bedroom that passes for my study/office/hideaway. There was just enough room on the desk among the computer, screen, hifi, electronic thingies etc.. For a test subject, a marjoram flower head was removed from the garden. Success - at last I could take high mag macros without having to take over the kitchen .

Mrs. L was out this afternoon so I thought I'd have a go at a stack. First thing was to check whether the flower head from the morning test still looked good enough. It looked OK through the Mark 1 eyeball. However, though the lens at x5 magnification, it was clear that the flower was dying (hardly surprising!). But hang on - why get a fresh flower when the dying flower was looking so weirdly interesting? And as luck would have it, there was just enough time to do the stack and have a cup of tea before Mrs L arrived home. So here is the dying marjoram flower. It's just over 2mm high.

K3 + Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x macro, f4 @ 5x magnification. Stack of 34 images, processed by Affinity Photo, focus step 1/24mm (42 microns). The stack had to stop at 34 because it was photobombed by a tiny creature with lots of legs....

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as usual.




Steve

Nicely done Steve - from your description it is clearly a small flower but from the image it really is difficult to tell just how small it is. The colouring and lighting are nicely done, as is the stacking - useful to know that it is available in Affinity Photo - that may be my next choice of processing software. Just out of interest do you use just Affinity or any other software?

I am impressed both with the image and the amount of work you put in to get it.

Thanks.

John - Interesting that you noticed the lighting. I've recently bought lots of clamps, magic arms, mini-ball heads and a Lume Cube in order to get lots of flexibility with lighting. The trouble is, with so many options now in front of me it's difficult to decide what to do!

Affinity Photo is what I now use for everything. It seems to have all that a reasonable person could ever need (and more) for manipulating photos and you get a perpetual licence, not an annual subscription. Stacking is almost trivial, just select the files that you want to stack and press 'start'. It does a pretty good job on straightforward images like this one. However, if it does fall short then there is no way of making it change how it does the stack, unlike with other (costing £££ ) specialist stacking software. The main thing that some people moan about re Affinity is that it doesn't have a cataloguing facility. However, that doesn't bother me as I like to think that I have an excellent filing system that is kept in perfect order - whether reality matches what I think is another matter!

Peter - The amount of work put in to get it was actually a lot less than hiking a few miles in the rain then waiting an hour until the light is just right for the perfect landscape then just as you're about to press the shutter button a cloud moves in front of the sun... .

Steve

Hi, Steve.

I'd be very interested to see/hear how you achieved your 1/24mm focus step size for your stacks, or is it still a W.I.P.?

Cheers,

Roger.
(coker)

Hi Roger.

I was wondering whether you would drop in, particularly as something you said a while ago during the Panny Macro Challenge was the inspiration that started the chain of thought that ended up with me now being able to get 1/24mm. Assuming that by W.I.P you mean 'work in progress', it definitely still is a W.I.P.. But it isn't a secret and it's all revealed in General Photographic Chat > What's your latest acquisition?. You're even acknowledged as the inspiration for the method .

Nice to see your new thread with the latest macros. We won't be overlapping - I'm focusing (groan...) on the kingdoms of plants and fungi, things with legs or wings are most definitely not my territory .

Steve

Steve....

Sorry, it's me again!


My decreasing attention span has beaten me again.....

Can't find ref to your 1/24th mm. step size.
Or a post about your set up.

But!

Seen some great images & not all of them plants!

Couldn't do me a link ( or 2!) could you?

Please!

Many thanks,

R.

Attention span always drops off in the hour before midnight, in my experience .
'General Photographic Chat' forum, 'What's your latest acquisition?' thread. The quest for 1/24mm is explained in my post of 12/08/2022 with an update in a post yesterday (23/08/2022).

Steve