Prairie Dock Again?

Prairie Dock

I have been waiting for this bud to open because it has a Blue Spruce tree behind it for the background.  I thought that it would provide an attractive background.

I shot three images that morning.  The above was the first.  I used f/16 and 1/20 sec.  It goes without saying that I used a tripod and remote shutter release.  I had some very cooperative light to boot.

Prairie Dock

I then shot two more Helicon Focus series.  I wanted the subject absolutely sharp in all aspects.  This is the one I chose to show.  It retains the background blur of the Blue Spruce even at f/16 and 1/20 sec.  Incidentally the ISO was 400 in all.  I used my Sigma 105mm lens.

Prairie Dock Setup

You might notice that I used a separate tripod to anchor the rose-holder.  That way the flower does not move every time I touch the camera.  In this case, the rose holder was not long enough, forcing me to use that other tripod.  I had to clamp it low enough that the clip was out of view.

A word about ISO

I could have chosen ISO 100 for this setup.  I think the reason I did not was that I am becoming a little more comfortable with noise.  I process some of it out in Adobe Camera Raw but not at the expense of sharpness in the critical areas.  After all, we used film with grain such as Tri-X Pan.  We got comfortable with it.  I read that noise is not as attractive as grain but I think of Tri-X with I adjust the noise in the raw files.

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