gardenersassistant
Well-Known Member
These are from a session in our garden yesterday that was rather brief and rushed because of other commitments (a.k.a. The Gardener had a lot of things for me to do). It was also a bit breezy and that really slows down video captures for stacking because you have to wait and try to catch lulls in the breeze when the subject isn't moving so much. So as time was short I used mainly single-image captures using aperture bracketing rather than using both video and stills to maximise my options. I did do a handful of video captures at the end of the session for some sheltered subjects that weren't moving around too much, and I've used two of them here.
These were all hand-held using unmodified natural light. The stills were shot as raw and processed with DXO PhotoLab, Lightroom and Topaz DeNoise AI. The focus stacks were shot with 6K video converted to JPEGs, aligned and stacked in Helicon Focus and post processed in Lightroom and DeNoise AI. The third and the fifth had a round trip from Lightroom to Photoshop and back to do some cloning that was too awkward to do in Lightroom.
#1 Magnolia. I suspect the background of this one is a bit busy for a lot of people's tastes, but the ones with larger apertures didn't have enough of the bud in focus for my taste, although I know that wouldn't trouble a lot of people. I suspect this is one that I would have preferred as a focus stack. It is a type of subject that stacks well and can produce very subdued backgrounds. Actually, I quite like having things going on in the background some of the time for a bit of variety, as long as the background somewhat complements the subject in some way and doesn't fight with the subject. This one seems ok to me from that point of view, but your mileage may very well vary.
1870 09 2021_03_23 P1251660_PLab4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#2 Camellia. We have eleven camellia bushes flowering at the moment, some with only a few flowers and some with quite a lot. Unfortunately most of the flowers are in a poor condition because of the weather we have been having, This was one of the better ones, but even so I had to spot out a dozen or so blemishes to make it a bit more presentable.
1870 12 2021_03_23 P1251791_PLab4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#3 Cyclamen. This is one of the video focus stacks. In order to avoid an issue with dark halos around the edge of the flowers it is a merger of two stacks of the same 30 JPEGs extracted from a 6K video, stacked using different methods, one used for the background and the edges of the flowers, the other used to get better definition and reduce overlap halos in the internal areas.
1870 13 2021_03_23 P1251857_0006 30 B30,4+innerC4-Edit LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#4 Lamium. The second of the stacks, this one using 55 video frames/JPEGs and a single stacking method.
1870 14 2021_03_23 P1251875_0020 55 C4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#5 Skimmia. I think this is another one that might have been better focus stacked. In this case it wouldn't have been because of the background rendition, but because I would have had better focus coverage of the subject, an optically better aperture, a lower ISO and a faster shutter speed. It is another one that I did some "repair work" on. Given the alterations I have made to a couple of these it may be worth mentioning that my aim is to produce "pretty pictures" (a.k.a. images I like the look of) and not documentation (which is something The Gardener sometimes requires, and that is a very different sort of thing, mainly to show what is where, how inter-plant colour combinations are working, to document changes over the years etc). That is why I refer to my stuff not as "photographs", but as "images". It seems more honest that way.
1870 16 2021_03_23 P1251978_PLab4-Edit LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
These were all hand-held using unmodified natural light. The stills were shot as raw and processed with DXO PhotoLab, Lightroom and Topaz DeNoise AI. The focus stacks were shot with 6K video converted to JPEGs, aligned and stacked in Helicon Focus and post processed in Lightroom and DeNoise AI. The third and the fifth had a round trip from Lightroom to Photoshop and back to do some cloning that was too awkward to do in Lightroom.
#1 Magnolia. I suspect the background of this one is a bit busy for a lot of people's tastes, but the ones with larger apertures didn't have enough of the bud in focus for my taste, although I know that wouldn't trouble a lot of people. I suspect this is one that I would have preferred as a focus stack. It is a type of subject that stacks well and can produce very subdued backgrounds. Actually, I quite like having things going on in the background some of the time for a bit of variety, as long as the background somewhat complements the subject in some way and doesn't fight with the subject. This one seems ok to me from that point of view, but your mileage may very well vary.
1870 09 2021_03_23 P1251660_PLab4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#2 Camellia. We have eleven camellia bushes flowering at the moment, some with only a few flowers and some with quite a lot. Unfortunately most of the flowers are in a poor condition because of the weather we have been having, This was one of the better ones, but even so I had to spot out a dozen or so blemishes to make it a bit more presentable.
1870 12 2021_03_23 P1251791_PLab4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#3 Cyclamen. This is one of the video focus stacks. In order to avoid an issue with dark halos around the edge of the flowers it is a merger of two stacks of the same 30 JPEGs extracted from a 6K video, stacked using different methods, one used for the background and the edges of the flowers, the other used to get better definition and reduce overlap halos in the internal areas.
1870 13 2021_03_23 P1251857_0006 30 B30,4+innerC4-Edit LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#4 Lamium. The second of the stacks, this one using 55 video frames/JPEGs and a single stacking method.
1870 14 2021_03_23 P1251875_0020 55 C4 LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
#5 Skimmia. I think this is another one that might have been better focus stacked. In this case it wouldn't have been because of the background rendition, but because I would have had better focus coverage of the subject, an optically better aperture, a lower ISO and a faster shutter speed. It is another one that I did some "repair work" on. Given the alterations I have made to a couple of these it may be worth mentioning that my aim is to produce "pretty pictures" (a.k.a. images I like the look of) and not documentation (which is something The Gardener sometimes requires, and that is a very different sort of thing, mainly to show what is where, how inter-plant colour combinations are working, to document changes over the years etc). That is why I refer to my stuff not as "photographs", but as "images". It seems more honest that way.
1870 16 2021_03_23 P1251978_PLab4-Edit LR 1300hDNAIAutoHalfSharp by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
