Flower and spray bottle unoriginality

[reznap]

These were done with an old Nikon 135mm f/2.8 manual aperture lens. I have an adapter to mount it on my camera and I put all of my extension tubes in between and took some pics of this flower (it's really not much larger than a quarter).

1 and 2 are soft light from my homemade lightbox.
3 and 4 have some flash added - which throws off the color temp but I like the look even if it is technically wrong..

Processing was limited to increasing the color clarity on the RAW file and raising the black levels as well as minor white balance adjustments.

Thoughts/comments/lambasting welcomed.

#1

#2

#3

#4

 

[tasman]

I like the first one. But they all could be more in focus.

 

[reznap]

I thought about stacking focus on a few but that's LYING. Actually... it might work well. The extension tubes on a 135mm focal length give a tiny plane of focus even at f/16 or f/22 - so I did the best I could.

What I wanted to do was use selective focus to draw the eye into the picture, with water drops, flower features, stem, etc.. Tried really hard but it flopped a little maybe.

 

[M.Powell]

Get the stamens in focus if you are going to focus on sections... JMO take it with a grain of salt
And why would stacking be lying? You took all of the photos...

 

[reznap]

Stamens.. been there done that - everyone does that. I wanted to try something different. Like I said before, if it flopped, oh well.. In my defense - the detail and sharpness at 100% is really cool, especially on the water droplets.

 

[M.Powell]

Stamens.. been there done that - everyone does that. I wanted to try something different. Like I said before, if it flopped, oh well.. In my defense - the detail and sharpness at 100% is really cool, especially on the water droplets.

lol... what was it you were trying? Maybe it would help to know what you were going for? I do like the water drops, they always look nice on flowers. But, now this is JMO, with flowers your eye almost always goes to the center, the stamens... then travels outward. Well mine do anyway...lol

 

[reznap]

I had one with the stamen in focus so I aligned the images and played with the layers myself (the auto stacking wasn't doing it for me). So this is my first focus stack, 3 photos, 3 different focal points..

Share your thoughts please before this thread inevitably goes to page 2 and beyond..

EDIT:
Also, here's a 100% crop of the image above