Mystery Flower

[Detail Man]

In late Summer of 2009 I took these with my humble (but trusty) first digital camera (a Panasonic DMC-LZ5 6 Mpixel, 6x Zoom).

While it does not have a Leica lens-system, is hardly "wide-agle" at 38mm, has only a 1/2.5 Inch image-sensor, the older Venus Plus Engine, and is unusably noisy over ISO=100 (I stick with ISO=80), it does not obliterate detail like so many modern compacts, does a good job auto-focusing, runs on AA size batteries, and has served me well for over 16,000 shots. I've used it to take thousands of outdoor portrait shots of my dear little friend Kendra, and some commendable nature and flower shots, as well. I would choose it over many of the multi-Mpixel over-aggressive NR and Sharpening nightmares stuffed onto tiny sensors these days (save for the DMC-LX3, that is ... ).

Does anybody know what this type of flower is called? It was a beautiful and interesting subject, indeed:


And, inspired by Marana's fine shot, I re-processed this similar beauty for your viewing pleasure:

 

[lensman]

DM,

Not sure what it is called, but the colour is rather nice.

I like the way you have processed #2, great capture.

David

 

[a_aguilar]

nice clean photos

 

[waloszek]

Hi,
My search in German plant catalogues lead to the following result: Celosia plumosa (or a similar species...). The German name for this flower is Hahnenkamm (meaning: cockscomb). It comes in different colors, as the following link shows:
http://www.gartendatenbank.de/photo/2009102507
Best regards, Gerd

 

[Detail Man]

Gerd, thanks for the information about the name of the "mystery flower" ...

 

[thelps]

DetailMan, I procrastinated a bit on replying to this thread - my apologies. I returned to your image of the Mystery plant several times, trying to work it out - thanks to Gerd we have our answer. The second image took me by surprise, I can truly see this is one of your 'gems'. Nature provided the material and the subject but you have captured it in an exquisite way and your PP extracted an excellent view. Thank you for the effort here - they are rewarding image to look that and I am a bit envious of the part of the world that you live in. I must look harder here for objects like this.

 

[Detail Man]

Tim,

I'm glad that you enjoyed the pics! I am lucky to live in a temperate and green environment, indeed. The only down-side is that 2 out every 3 days is overcast in Seattle, and Summers are fairly short. Regarding the "Stargazer" image that you particularly liked. Like just about all my "gems" it represents about 1% of all attempts made. In this particular case, the near-dusk light was beautiful - and so was the state of the flower photographed (they are beautiful one day, and wilted/gone soon after).

I had not used my old LZ5 in a while. But, fed up with the auto-focus problems that my TZ4 had (only "spot" focus worked out in Macro or normal auto-focus), I used the LZ5 that day. Unfortunately, I forgot to place the LZ5 in "Macro" mode, and took no less than 150 shots (149 of which were out of focus because I was too close for the normal auto-focus mode). That one was the only shot of the entire lot that worked (somehow ...). Also, inspired by Marana's shot, I took the time to completely re-process the original JPG in PSP9, and used XnView to re-sample it to a 800 pixel height by 600 pixel width size. Used mild USM (as previously described in previous posts) to make it look snappy. So, there was a lot of time and effort that went into making it look so nice - in addition to being lucky to have been there at that place and time in that light, and (somehow) being lucky enough that my LX5 managed to focus properly despite my "operator error". More serendipity and sweat that talent, I would say ...