The Camellia Bloom

by Sean Setters

While washing dishes a few days ago, I noticed that the camellia bush just outside the window was blooming. Having never photographed camellia blooms, and with several freely available, I clipped my favorite from the bush, placed it in a small cup of water and brought it into the studio.

As luck would have it, I already had a couple of monolights with gridded strip boxes set up from a previous flower shot (a tulip), so I simply placed the camellia cutting on a posing stool between them. I grabbed my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens, affixed it to my tripod-mounted 5D Mark III and framed the scene to include the entire stamen group set against the petals.

As with many of my flower shots, I opted for a focus stacking technique which would allow me to capture a precise DOF (depth-of-field) which included the entire group of stamens. The focus stacking technique works especially well in situations such as these because the closer you get to an object (to increase magnification), the shallower the DOF at a given aperture. By shooting many incrementally focused images, you can later choose exactly which images to include in your focus stack, thereby selecting the precise DOF you want after the fact. When capturing images for a focus stack, the aperture you choose doesn't necessarily increase (or decrease) the DOF in your final image (the number of shots used for the focus stack ); however, the aperture you choose will affect your margin for error when incrementing focus (with wider apertures allowing for less room for error) and will affect the transition to out-of-focus elements (blur) at the beginning and end of your focus stack.

Camera settings for the individual shots were f/8, 1/160 sec and ISO 100, and I manually rotated the focus ring (very slightly) for each exposure. The image you see above was compiled from 22 individual images using Helicon Focus with final edits made in Adobe Photoshop CC.

A larger version of the image can be seen on Flickr.