Small Cactus, Big Flower

Cacti are blooming in the greenhouse. Here's one of the more spectacular flowers. One day the cactus was covered in buds, the next day most of them had opened. I wonder if the flower is waiting for an exotic pollinator from the Americas which will never come...

K3 + Irix 150mm (as usual). Stack of 11 with Affinity Photo.

Thoughts, comments etc. welcome as always.




Steve

Not working for me I am afraid. The stamens are not sharp and the leaves/petals ? on the left of the frame are a distraction

Fair cop, guv, guilty on both counts!

I'd tried a square crop but still had a couple of orange tips protruding at the left, which annoyed me, so wondered whether leaving more of the offending flower in the frame would be less distracting. Clearly not. The plant couldn't be moved for the shot, bits drop off it very easily!

The stamens are odd. They are sharp in the full size original but not after being shrunk to 800px prior to posting. Here's the same but uploading the full size version and letting the forum software reduce the size. It looks better through my varifocals. What do you think?




Steve

Hi Steve

I did a quick edit and removed the petals on the left and cropped a little on the left.

The stamens are interesting. I experienced the same as you when viewing them at less than 100%. I have always been an advocate of posting images so they display at 100% rather than letting forum software downsize and introduce artifacts, but never have seen it this dramatic.

Apologies for doubting your sharpening skills

In my view, Pete's revised version is an improvement on the original

Aha! That's the picture I wanted but couldn't get. I didn't have the courage (read that as competence) to clone a cactus. Thank you!!

Re the stamens, I wonder whether different size reduction algorithms are good/bad at different types of detail. Those stamens are quite different to, say, closely spaced lines so it wouldn't be unreasonable for one algorithm to be best for one and another for the other. But that's pure speculation.

Steve

I think you are right about it being the "kind" of detail that matters. Even when editing in Photoshop reducing the viewing size had an immediate effect on the sharpness of them.