Streptocarpus

Or is the plural 'streptocarpuses'? Anyway, here are some more photos of Mrs. L's efforts at brightening up the window sills during autumn/winter. The usual self-imposed rules of engagement applied - do not do anything that might cause damage unless prepared to face the consequences (which I'm not). Falling Stars is the true name of the variety. Dragon 1 was the first plant to flower from a packet of seeds called 'Dragon mixed' (Dragon 2, 3, ... etc. are not far behind). I don't know the true name of the third streptocarpus, it's called Ivy in the Lubbyman household because it came to us via a devious route from somewhere in Ivybridge, Devon. From what I see on my tablet screen, the embedded images don't do the originals justice (particularly Ivy) , so click for the bigger pictures to see the flowers in their full glory .

Falling Stars and Dragon 1 were take with the K3 + DA 35mm macro. Ivy was with K3 + Sigma Ex DG 70mm macro - very much a test run with this new (to me) lens), which it has passed with flying colours. In fact, the Sigma was acquired in the hope that it would be a better focal length for flower photos in the space I've got available. And it is!

All photos are stacks, processed with Affinity Photo. Falling Stars about 15 images, Dragon 1 about 20 images (I didn't note down the exact numbers). Ivy is 28 images.

Thoughts, comments welcome as usual.

1. Streptocarpus Falling Stars



2. Streptocarpus Dragon 1



3. Streptocarpus 'Ivy' (not her real name)



Steve

Lovely subjects Steve, I like Ivy in particular, for the composition. I wonder if there's any way to pull a little more light out of those petals, for contrast, or perhaps go the other direction and pull it all way back for mystery? Then again, it's fine as is, it just seems it could go different ways, all of them interesting.

Thanks, Serge. Ivy was the most challenging, it took two attempts to get her looking reasonable. The stacks have to be constructed from jpegs so I use straight out of camera files. Using the DNG files, it should be possible to pull more light out of the petals while retaining detail. However, the thought of processing all those DNGs and not being sure that the result will be OK until the stack has been processed ...

Steve

Ah yes, I wasn't thinking straight - I guess there's no way to stack unprocessed raws (and pp the resulting file). I certainly understand your reluctance!