Orchids

During a bright sunny day, was able to make photos of some beautiful Orchids. Very colorful, absolutely stunning flowers, these particular ones are of the Phalaenopsis species if I’m not mistaken.

The flower’s shape can be quite unique and varied across the different species.

I’ve grown fond of capturing such colorful flowers with my camera.

No doubt this may in part be related to what also attracts me to anime and its art, the bright, lively colors, giving it such a radiance that just bubbles with life and energy.

Like usual, made these photos with the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro USM lens on my Canon 450D.

Have it equipped with a polarizing filter and lens hood, think for this type of outdoors flower photography under bright sunlight such a polarizing filter is a good advantage and enables you to get more crisp colored images.

For this set of photos, shot both using a tripod, remote trigger and mirror lock up, as well as freehand too.

The fact I could stabilize the Canon on my knee or lie down in the grass, resting my elbows firmly on the ground helped, and the abundant sunlight enabled a fast enough shutter time that still guaranteed sharp photos without any motion blur.

The lack of IS (Image Stabilizer) function in the 100mm macro lens still makes it a challenging lens to use for me, when the exposure time increases most of my shots will come out blurry as any slight motion of the camera immediately shows through, resulting in unsharp images.

Beautiful flowers, especially in this soft pink color range.

Though parts of the flower’s shape sometimes seem a bit alien to me, vastly different from say a Rose, a Dandelion or a Forget-me-not.

Using the default f/2.8 aperture, you get photos with a really terrific bokeh effect but it also makes the 100mm macro lens’ depth of field very narrow.

With such a small depth of field, any slight movement of the camera might lead to an unsharp subject or shift the focus range to a part of the subject you didn’t want to focus on.

Hence why I also used f-stop f/4.0 for some of these particular shots, with the abundant light could still retain a fast enough shutter speed and get sharp results with the smaller aperture.

Wasn’t easy at first to get the concept of aperture and f-stops by just reading the textual explanations and definitions, seeing it visualized with a diagram really helped a lot.

These last two photos are from another orchid plant, with a slightly different shape and color palette. Liked the contrast between both plants and how each had unique bright colors that stood out in the bright sunlight.

Since a lot of detailing the macro lens captures gets lost when downsizing the images, opted to crop out a section of the above photo, making the below image a cut out from the original sized 4272×2848 canvas.

Just look at all the sharp, minute details a macro lens can capture and show us.

A lovely lens, very glad I ultimately choose to purchase it. While it has definite limitations and a steep learning curve, it does enable you to make some great shots.