Your *amazing* macroscopic plant detail photos.

[mynah]

Thanks, Ganoderma! Now let me try that anther again...



Aha!

[Ganoderma]

can you explain that pic a bit? i am not sure what i'm looking at, is it a petal or anther?


lovely pic!!!!! got more?

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

turtle more great pics! it goes to show what a person can do when they are good at taking photos! i would love to see your photo skills with an expensive SLR

keep them coming!!!!

You are too kind. One of my roomies bought a digital SLR recently, but I'm not allowed to use it. Who ya gonna call?

Anyway, I mislabled the first leaf-hair shot as sitka valerian, when it was youth-on-age plant. I made the correction and here is the shot of the sitka valerian. I am growing both in my south-facing windowsill.

leaf hairs on sitka valerian

[Turtle]

In this shot, because of the shallow depth of field, the nearer pistils are out of focus, as are some of the stamens farther back. Ah for the days of Kodachrome and long exposures at small aperatures!

They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day...

......

california poppy

[mynah]

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

can you explain that pic a bit? i am not sure what i'm looking at, is it a petal or anther?


lovely pic!!!!! got more?

I have to admit the flower is so complicated that I had to wait till morning to pick one and identify the parts for myself... I was wrong about the blue arrow being an anther. (And it is the official floral emblem of Natal province where I grew up, too! )

The strelitzia inflorescence consists of a boat-shaped spathe (not shown) enclosing several flowers. Below is one of the flowers. The orange parts are three sepals that enclose three blue petals. Two of these (to the left of the arrow) are very small. The third, the arrow, encloses both the pistil (which I pulled out slightly to illustrate it better) and the anthers.



Thanks for the compliment! (Hints I picked up here helped a lot...) Here are some more pics I took yesterday:

Young rose leaf with spider on the back:

[IMG][/IMG]

Close-up of pointsettia flowers

[IMG][/IMG]

[Ganoderma]

very very nice guys!

what cameras are we all using?

mine is a cannon EOS Kiss, but i only have the kit lens, hence the crappy pics (and i am still figuring out the tricks with dslr cams.....ma i am a slow learner!) i could take better pics with my old nikon cp, but it broke when i finally figured it all out. it had a 2cm macro mode...which was so easy to use.

i am trying to get a good pic of all the root hairs on sprouting seeds, but its proving a problem lol.....me needs a lens! i can only get like 12" away at best!!!

[mynah]

I just have a Sony Cybershot DSC-W80. My two SLR film cameras are still lying around, and though I have a lens with a fairly good macro setting for them, working with film and manual focus is rather wasteful if the main subjects of your photography are animals and plant close-ups! Would have loved more control over focus and depth of field, though...

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by mynah

I just have a Sony Cybershot DSC-W80. My two SLR film cameras are still lying around, and though I have a lens with a fairly good macro setting for them, working with film and manual focus is rather wasteful if the main subjects of your photography are animals and plant close-ups! Would have loved more control over focus and depth of field, though...

One of the kids has my old SLR equipment, and I was actually thinking about asking them for it back. They're on digital anyway now, and I was thinking of trying shooting Kodachrome and scanning the slides at 1200 dpi. I think film can give advantages over digital for close-ups of plants. Anyway, here's a shot I took last Spring for an ecology survey.

PS love the spider shadow. Halloween's just around the corner.

stinging nettle

[mynah]

You seem to know some vicious-looking characters!

Have to admit I've enhanced this mint a little for an art project...

[IMG][/IMG]

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by mynah

You seem to know some vicious-looking characters!

Ay. The worst of the worst.

Originally Posted by Mynah

Have to admit I've enhanced this mint a little for an art project...

Enhancement good; no apologies needed. Do we expect Ansel Adams to aplogize for his enhancements? Nay nay.

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

[plant] photos without the scope, just camera shots. specifically of up close parts of the plants, roots, reproductive organs etc. how detailed can we get with "just" a camera?

cant wait to see if there are others with my perverse photo addiction

The digital camera is a specific example of digital imaging in general, and where actual research as well as aesthetic appeal are concerned, I have found the flat-bed scanner an excellent tool for imaging plant parts. Below is a 1200 dpi scan of the cross section of a branch of Oregon Ash. (click to enlarge) I submit that we may submit images acquired by this method.

oregon ash