Kitchen Table Flower Photography

D200, Nikkor 105 macro, 20 sec @ f/4.0.

Richard, 2 things

1. why 20 seconds
2. it's out of focus

This style of flower image has lots of possibilities.

I agree with Darren both on the possibilities and the focus. I'm assuming the 20s was to try to keep DOF? If the lack of focus is because of a tiny DOF, you might try merging several shots with an image stacker like CombineZ or HeliconFocus.

Thanks for your comments. This was shot at 20 sec. because it was shot at f/40 to try to increase the depth of field. I'm a little puzzled because I posted this on the flora site and everyone commented about how sharp it was. I'm reposting it again, hoping that it will appear as it did on the other site.

Much better, Richard. Might be a compression thing. It's a terrific shot!

I'm a little confused. On the original post, you mention aperature at f/4.0 - then on the repost, you write that it is at f/40.0. You can't do f/40.0 even on medium format film without a major hit in image quality !! Lens diffraction at that aperature is massive and will produce pretty unusable images. Given the Depth of Field, f/11.0 - 16.0 would have worked to give you a much sharper image.

2 informative sites to check if you want more info:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-diffraction.shtml

It's rather eye-opening........