Cactus flower macro

[Steve Foss]

I have a barrel cactus that delivers one bloom per spring when the days lengthen. The bloom only lasts a day before dying.

This morning was the day.

I shot these with the Canon 30D, the Canon 17-40L IS at 40mm, iso400 at f4, and a Kenko 36mm extension tube. Using the tube, the lens can focus much closer, but autofocus is lost.

So I moved toward the bloom until just the tops of the stamens were in focus, paused, and engaged the shutter with high-speed motor drive while moving in slowly with handheld camera/lens. Shutter speed was just fast enough at that aperture and iso to deliver sharp images. I came away with a bunch of images with narrow segments of the 2-inch depth of the flower in focus, the first image with the top in focus and the last with the deep bottom of the throat in focus.

Interesting differences in perspective. Here are three. All full-frame top to bottom but cropped in from sides for square presentation.

Top in focus

1/100

Middle in focus

1/100

Deep throat in focus

1/80

[polarsusd81]

Steve, is it possible to try to shoot that stopped way down to like f22 or so. I think it would look awesome as a macro with greater dof, never seen the bloom of a barrel cactus. Don't get me wrong though, these are pretty intense as is.

[Swimmer]

Cool shots. That last one looks like you did a number on it in PS (though I know it is the result of DOF). It would be fun to see the whole plant/flower too.

[Jim Almquist]

Very neat shots Steve.

[Steve Foss]

Sorry, been out of commission all weekend building our garage.

Here's the full flower. Same camera/lens setup as the others, with lens at 21mm, iso200, 1/25 at f6.3, handheld

[Nate McVey]

To bad that only blooms for a day.............sure is a pretty flower

[carlcmc]

interesting pictures.

When I get home I will have to post a link to a software package you should try.

Basically what it does is take several pictures from same reference but different focus settings and merge them into one picture with everything being in focus. As I think about it, since we aren't able to post links to commercial products, if you google helicon, the first result for helicon soft: products then click on helicon focus.

that will show you what you can accomplish with it.