Post your flower pics
- Thread starter jdeg
- Start date
Blue439
New member
I will try my hand at posting a few flowers, too... 
First, a very old one, probably from the Spring of 2008, just a few months after I bought the D3. Shot most likely with the Nikkor 14-24mm ƒ/2.8 G, but I have no EXIF to confirm. Handheld in a field near my house.
October 2015, Tête d’Or Park in Lyon, France, Nikon D810, Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8 G VR macro lens:
And January 2021, lit only by flash in the studio, Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 S lens, most likely on tripod:
First, a very old one, probably from the Spring of 2008, just a few months after I bought the D3. Shot most likely with the Nikkor 14-24mm ƒ/2.8 G, but I have no EXIF to confirm. Handheld in a field near my house.
October 2015, Tête d’Or Park in Lyon, France, Nikon D810, Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8 G VR macro lens:
And January 2021, lit only by flash in the studio, Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 S lens, most likely on tripod:
Blue439
New member
A couple more flowers. The first two photos are natural light, the first one with a white reflector (one of those folding Lastolite things), and in both cases I sprayed water on the flower before I took the shot. The last one is lit by flash only, in one of those “Overpower the midday Sun with just one small cobra flash!” exercises that are fun to practice.
Nikon D810, Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8 G VR lens, handheld.
Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8 G lens, handheld.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens. Handheld, off-camera flash.
Nikon D810, Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8 G VR lens, handheld.
Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm ƒ/2.8 G lens, handheld.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens. Handheld, off-camera flash.
Blue439
New member
Nikon D810, Micro-Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.8 G VR lens, handheld (2017). White Lastolite reflector to camera left.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens(2021). Handheld, off-camera flash.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens (2021). Handheld, off-camera flash.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens(2021). Handheld, off-camera flash.
Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z MC 105mm ƒ/2.8 VR S macro lens (2021). Handheld, off-camera flash.
Blue439
New member
All right, foliage being apparently not entirely prohibited from this thread, I will post a couple of photos that illustrate some of the possibilities when shooting closeup or macro outdoors. Because you are creating all the light that will appear in the photo (the shots below were taken in the bright Midday Sun in southwestern France, but the Sun was completely overpowered by the flash), you can make that light as hard or as soft as you wish; as strong or as weak as you wish; and you can choose to isolate your subject from cluttered background much more efficiently than by using bokeh.
The light of the flash is by nature very harsh, as the head puts out a lot of watts from a very small emitting surface. Here, that light was softened by using a small Lastolite softbox with two layers of diffusing material. Thus, the light is not far from the warm, natural light of a late afternoon Sun, but a Sun aimed precisely where you wanted it.
As an additional benefit, the very short duration of the blitz eliminates all problems caused by the breeze making foliage and flowers move, which is the bane of the macrophotographer. This is the main reason why I began to use flash for closeups and macro outdoors: as our house is built on a hilltop, it does get easily breezy, which is very nice under a heat wave but used to bother me a lot when trying to shoot macros in the garden. With flash, no more worries: under you shoot under a real gale, any breeze-induced swaying will be frozen by the flash and your photo will be sharp.
Both photos shot with Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 50mm, ƒ/1.8 S lens.
The light of the flash is by nature very harsh, as the head puts out a lot of watts from a very small emitting surface. Here, that light was softened by using a small Lastolite softbox with two layers of diffusing material. Thus, the light is not far from the warm, natural light of a late afternoon Sun, but a Sun aimed precisely where you wanted it.
As an additional benefit, the very short duration of the blitz eliminates all problems caused by the breeze making foliage and flowers move, which is the bane of the macrophotographer. This is the main reason why I began to use flash for closeups and macro outdoors: as our house is built on a hilltop, it does get easily breezy, which is very nice under a heat wave but used to bother me a lot when trying to shoot macros in the garden. With flash, no more worries: under you shoot under a real gale, any breeze-induced swaying will be frozen by the flash and your photo will be sharp.
Both photos shot with Nikon Z7, Nikkor Z 50mm, ƒ/1.8 S lens.
We do have a thread for Leaf/leaves.
https://nikonites.com/forum/threads/post-your-leaf-shots.15750/
Blue439
New member
Darn! Sorry. I wish someone had told me yesterday. I tried to do a search but obviously I’m not very familiar with the forum’s search tool yet! If more foliage comes my way, I’ll be sure to post it there. Thanks !
No problem. You don't get any demerits for that!!
It is sometimes more productive to use a search engine to search web sites. Type site:xyz.com then your terms.
We also have this old thread that no one updates anymore.
Old Threads
Blue439
New member
Back to the subject of flowers, here are two more taken in my house garden, also lit by off-camera flash, but with settings such as to allow some of the existing natural light to blend in and let us see some of the background (“dragging shutter”, I think they call this technique). I hope you will like them.
Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 105mm, ƒ/2.8 G VR lens, handheld. Off-camera flash lighting.
Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 60mm, ƒ/2.8 D lens, handheld. Off-camera flash lighting.
Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 105mm, ƒ/2.8 G VR lens, handheld. Off-camera flash lighting.
Nikon Z7, Micro-Nikkor 60mm, ƒ/2.8 D lens, handheld. Off-camera flash lighting.
Blue439
New member
Two last flower photos from me for the time being. The first one below, the yellow rose, is interesting as it was one of my first attempts at shooting and processing a very large stack, in this case no less than 50 exposures, shot using the focus-stacking function built into the D850. Like my wife said, “It’s the camera doing all the work by itself, and you sitting back and watching!” —which was of course totally unfair, as I’d had to employ considerable quantities of my gray matter to program the thing!
Fifty exposures were definitely needed to have most, if not all, of the flower in focus, and the processing in Helicon Focus took quite some time as well. I should probably have taken a dozen or so more exposures, as the back of the flower is not fully sharp, but I figured that, for a “proof of concept” photograph, 50 were enough.
Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm, ƒ/2.8 D, Fotodiox Pro 35–mm extension tube. Likely reproduction ratio around 2:1. Gitzo tripod, Arca-Swiss Cube C1 geared head. Artificial lighting.
Just a humble garden flower shot with off-camera flash on a windy day —perfectly sharp! The EXIF will tell you that the shutter speed was 1/60 second, but in reality the duration of the flash burst was probably something like 1/10,000 second or even less, and as the light from the flash was the only one lighting the scene, that was the actual duration of the exposure. Any movement of the tiny flower in the wind was effectively frozen by such a short duration.
Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor Z MC 105mm, ƒ/2.8 S lens, handheld. Off-camera flash.
Fifty exposures were definitely needed to have most, if not all, of the flower in focus, and the processing in Helicon Focus took quite some time as well. I should probably have taken a dozen or so more exposures, as the back of the flower is not fully sharp, but I figured that, for a “proof of concept” photograph, 50 were enough.
Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm, ƒ/2.8 D, Fotodiox Pro 35–mm extension tube. Likely reproduction ratio around 2:1. Gitzo tripod, Arca-Swiss Cube C1 geared head. Artificial lighting.
Just a humble garden flower shot with off-camera flash on a windy day —perfectly sharp! The EXIF will tell you that the shutter speed was 1/60 second, but in reality the duration of the flash burst was probably something like 1/10,000 second or even less, and as the light from the flash was the only one lighting the scene, that was the actual duration of the exposure. Any movement of the tiny flower in the wind was effectively frozen by such a short duration.
Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor Z MC 105mm, ƒ/2.8 S lens, handheld. Off-camera flash.
Robin W
Senior Member
The yellow rose is stunning and worth all the effort you put into the programing!Two last flower photos from me for the time being. The first one below, the yellow rose, is interesting as it was one of my first attempts at shooting and processing a very large stack, in this case no less than 50 exposures, shot using the focus-stacking function built into the D850. Like my wife said, “It’s the camera doing all the work by itself, and you sitting back and watching!” —which was of course totally unfair, as I’d had to employ considerable quantities of my gray matter to program the thing!
Fifty exposures were definitely needed to have most, if not all, of the flower in focus, and the processing in Helicon Focus took quite some time as well. I should probably have taken a dozen or so more exposures, as the back of the flower is not fully sharp, but I figured that, for a “proof of concept” photograph, 50 were enough.
Nikon D850, Micro-Nikkor 60mm, ƒ/2.8 D, Fotodiox Pro 35–mm extension tube. Likely reproduction ratio around 2:1. Gitzo tripod, Arca-Swiss Cube C1 geared head. Artificial lighting.
View attachment 409051
Just a humble garden flower shot with off-camera flash on a windy day —perfectly sharp! The EXIF will tell you that the shutter speed was 1/60 second, but in reality the duration of the flash burst was probably something like 1/10,000 second or even less, and as the light from the flash was the only one lighting the scene, that was the actual duration of the exposure. Any movement of the tiny flower in the wind was effectively frozen by such a short duration.
Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor Z MC 105mm, ƒ/2.8 S lens, handheld. Off-camera flash.
View attachment 409052