Scattered showers

[LaFoto]

The weather today was undecided. Showers, sunshine, showers, sunshine. All the plants in our garden were covered in droplets, and sometimes they would even glisten nicely.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

 

[(Ghastly) Krueger]

Nice, and sharp images, Corinna. Good use of the raindrops still hanging.

For the 1st one I'd love just a tiny bit more DOF and for the 2nd one I think a slightly different angle which takes the out of focus branch from behind the focused one would be better.

3 4 and 5 are excellent! And so green!

 

[nossie]

Wundershoen (with umlauts)
So what was the setup? What lens?
In 5 how did you get the sparkle onto the droplet?

Actually 4 has a strange DOF please explain how it got there.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

WOW.. I haven't seen your images for a long time, and these are brilliant!!

very well done LaFoto!

 

[plastii]

Very nice - I love the 5th one
What settings on your camera did you use to get this kind of picture?

 

[dab_20]

This pictures made me go 'Ooooo'. hehe. Great series... I love #5!

 

[Kristie]

Very nice!! My fav is #4!

 

[Coldow91]

I like 3&5 the best. Great shots!!

 

[castrol]

Five hands DOWN. I love that sun flare. Perfect!

 

[hamster]

These are all beautiful. I love 4 and 5. That star is PERFECT.

 

[Garbz]

I didn't know you had a macro lens too. 3 Looks fantastic. 5 too. Wondering is that a post processed star in number 5? If so it's very well placed. Looks like a star filter was on the lens.

 

[LaFoto]

Hey, thanks a lot, folks, for your wonderful comments. Much, much, much appreciated. Even Ray spoke. :hugs:

To answer some of your questions (without remembering who asked which and how many were asked):

These were taken with my Sigma DG 70-300mm f4-5.6 zoom lens in the macro setting (longest extension), which means I need to work with f5.6 (could stop down, of course) and oodles of light, if that is to be had. There were no "oodles" when I took the first (which was the first to be taken), as there still was a big cloud covering the sky and taking away the light. Hence the shallow DOF. I looked for a twig pointing towards me and played with the effect a little that the shallow DOF and one focus point only in the whole wide frame would give. Isn't for everybody (and that one is not my favourite of the series, either).

The branches of the "Kristian-tree" ... well, I can either be standing in the garden, at ground level (which is from where I took Photo 3), or I can photograph the tree with the tele-zoom out of the first floor window (my husband's study here in the house). Photo 2 was taken from upstairs. Few possibilities inbetween, other than putting up a ladder, maybe, climbing that and photographing from there ... but such photos would have loads of blur as I usually shake with fear when on top of a ladder! I don't "do" ladders really well! So, Krueger, other than finding myself another branch, there had to be the one branch right behind the other.

The funny DOF in Photo 4 is because DOF in the macro settings is automatically quite shallow, no matter how much I stop down (and in yesterday's weather conditions there was no way to "endlessly" stop down, or I would have had to bring out the tripod, which I was too lazy to do --- cough-cough, but it also started to rain again when I took Photo 4 and I had to rush inside, anyway). Those leaves are in a densely leafed tree, very densely leafed, so there are leaves front, back, centre, top and bottom, in other words: everywhere. Hence the out-of-focus ones before focus hit on the droplets.

The sparkle in the last (and third) is easy to achieve: you have to stop down quite a bit (f22 it was), put the lens into macro mode, focus to nearest element, and carefully focus with your body (slowly swinging into the focus, sort of...) until you see in the viewfinder that the droplet and the broken sunlight is in focus. And then release, quickly, not shaking, without moving out of that thin focus line again. The closed aperture makes the sparkle applear like a star, as parts of the bright light can only sneak through the aperture blades.

I hope I now explained everything.

And Garbz, you wrote while I was composing this lengthy reply, and well, no star filter, no star made in post procession, it is all done right inside the camera.

 

[spako]

Wow .. I really like the reflection in the last on!! what a great job!!

 

[plastii]

Thanks for the explanation

 

[nossie]

LaFoto thank's for the tech-talk and the background information. That's a fascinating insight to how that star was born. I know there are filters to do tricks like that but that's a new one on me.

For me most people post shots here but don't give any information to the work that went into it, which for me is the point that most needs to be learned. I'd like to see a minimum of lens/iso/aper/Sspeed with each image as a basic pointer to how a shot was made. Then it's a bonus to have a commentary from the photographer on what physical effort went into it e.g. Up at 6:30a.m. and had to wait 3 hours for the traffic to be just right etc.