Learning macro photography.

My Wife has that SAME Orchid and I took it on my Hasselblad 501CM !

It looks very good, Peter. At close range and in the gorgeous colours of this orchid as rendered by Velvia, it is both realistic and yet almost abstract.

Pentaxpete - Mary's dad started trying in the late '70s to breed a new color of orchid. He built a Heathkit PC, learned basic to write a program to track his genetic crossings (before Visicalc), and set up a miniature cloning lab in his basement. When he passed on, Mary was the only one who had interest in orchids and got his plants and growing equipment. After 15 years she decided it took too much time and cut back to just a couple plants.

Pentaxuser - The experience for the first time of filling the viewfinder with just one flower was amazing. It's also been several years since I broke off my love affair with Velvia, and even after telling myself it's just to use up the old expired film, this seductive lady has been pulling me back. I know it can't end well, but... We men are such fools.

Great shot! You really nailed the exposure- pushed up to the whites without losing detail, and maintained the coloring. In a digital capture you could risk saturating the sensor both in the whites and in the color. Just out of interest- how much bellows did you use, and how open were you? The bokeh is very smooth, and it does not look wide open.

Markwyatt - Thank you. It's about f16 or f11 from 6-10 inches away. Bellows adjustment came to 1 or 1.5 stop. 1/2 second, maybe? It's illuminated by a large window 2 feet behind me with reflected northern noon-day light on a crystal clear Colorado day. Sort of the world's largest soft box. Yes, one thing that's really nice about the 80mm Mamiya lens is how buttery the out of focus areas are. The black thing in the background is a microwave about 15 feet away.

Remember though, it's one shot out of 12