Could be a Challenge topic I suppose but I was just having fun with a new Nikon 60mm 2.8 Macro so I thought I'd post'em up. I gave Street Photography workshop on Thursday night/evening and discovered a bunch of flower lovers and I decided to enter the zone....THE FLOWER ZONE!!!!
Now, I just need to break out the glycerin and totally go to town...
The bokeh on this lens is bothering me... in the first image, it looks like you took a soft white brush and traced the edge of the flowers in the background, and in the second one, there are sharp edges to out of focus parts (the red one especially).
I think that guy George is totally right. There's something wrong with that lens. Especially on that camera. I think you need to send both to me, because they are no use to you. In exchange I can send you my D70 (hey! I need the D200 for backup!) with the very, very reliable kit lens it came with, excellent for city photography I've been told (I think).
It's so fun to see you (again) try flowers, Steve! I wonder if it is as scary for you to try flowers as it is for me to try things like:
You certainly picked a good time of year to pay attention to flowers in your bit of the world! As soon as the daffodils came up I broke out the extension tubes and pointed them in floral directions. I think I've been out shooting flowers almost every day since then, for no particular reason at all, either with extension tubes or my 50mm/1.4 or both. I love this time of year. Not that many of the pictures are ever seen by anyone but me. Doesn't matter; I'm having fun!
It may be time for another Floral side challenge ... glycerin optional ;-)
I think that guy George is totally right. There's something wrong with that lens. Especially on that camera. I think you need to send both to me
Do you disagree with my observation?
Not sure, George. You're right about what you're seeing, but I don't know if that's because of poor lens performance (what seems to be your conclusion), of how the image was shot (looks like rather strong, fairly direct light), of processing, or of a combination of factors. I'd need more info.
I think that guy George is totally right. There's something wrong with that lens. Especially on that camera. I think you need to send both to me
Do you disagree with my observation?
Not sure, George. You're right about what you're seeing, but I don't know if that's because of poor lens performance (what seems to be your conclusion), of how the image was shot (looks like rather strong, fairly direct light), of processing, or of a combination of factors. I'd need more info.
It's not the bokeh on the lens but an aqua luminance shift that caused the fringing. Shooting into the sun/sky or strong direct light, is the issue as Ursula noted. I guess the question is...do I care (?) and the answer is "no". It was a three minute edit/conversion just to have fun. The second image is pretty much spot on for a basic conversion.
Ursula - Scared of flowers....ME? Well, maybe a little. ;) Honestly, I was getting in touch with my feminine side after doing two back-to-back workshops of mostly women. I'm getting little soft in the middle but I need that every now and again....it's a good thing. In a few weeks, it's back to shooting the hard-nosed bastards so, this is a nice little soft lead before I get back into the gnarly stuff. In the long run...it's what keeps me sane.
It's not the bokeh on the lens but an aqua luminance shift that caused the fringing.
I was gonna say, it looked more like fringing/banding.
Banding is like what you see in Max Headroom Videos and what I have here is fringing/haloing caused by the heavy aqua/blue shift, contrast play and sharpening. I kinda like it in an odd way but not really being a flower guy, I probably won't give the image much more love at this point. Although I might if I ever decide to print it...
Main thing is flowers are fun to shoot and I kinda got bored of shooting food.
It's certainly a sharpening artifact, whether from in-camera or in post-processing, especially if you use USM. If you do, or maybe even if you don't, read this; it's quite illuminating.
