Dan,
These are great. I like all three, black, white and color, but I get a greater feeling of detail which really takes me into the image with the black background. I wonder if there's a middle ground, or some soft light from the side.
I'm curious about the focus blending. Is this for dof? I would have thought this was flat 2 dimensions. What am I missing?
Great job.
Best,
Mitchell
Well it's a bit more complicated than that. First these patches of frost are very small, from 1 to 4 centimeters. At that size dof is very thin. Couple that with me shooting at f/5.6 and the dof is very very thin. Now you don't have to shoot at 5.6 but you need to realize that I'm a bit obsessive when it comes image quality. The effective aperture at 1:1 magnification when shot at 5.6 is f/11. At f/11 my ability to resolve fine detail is already diffraction limited. Any wider than 5.6 on my 65mpe and optical shortcomings reduce image quality. I'm trying to extract as much image quality from these shots as possible in order to make large prints.
Second, it's very difficult for me, when freezing my butt off, to get the camera perfectly square with the glass pane.
Third, the plane of focus projected by the lens is not perfectly flat.
And last, the frost is actually somewhat 3d. There are crystals that grow away from the glass and require many shots to fully capture.
Here is a photo that shows some crystals growing away from the glass.
Dan
www.danbrownphotography.com
