Critique Required Fuzzball

[Stevenson Gawen]

O well, not really a fuzzball... only a dandelion. (Taraxicum officinale if I remember correctly).
A few days ago I was having the kind of day when nothing goes 'right'... (on the bright side nothing serious went wrong!) But I had the bright idea of taking a walk with a camera while I had time, hoping it would help me feel a bit better... It did actually! Anyway, that aside, I'm just looking through the photos and liked this one.

Would anyone like to guess what media/camera this was taken on? No big deal, just curious if you think it looks like... um... what it is!

No rules....

 

[Pete Askew]

Very efective and the image colours / tones almost look like bleach bypass. As to the camera / lens - it looks suspiciously like something from one of the Lensbaby lenses.

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

looks suspiciously like

Thanks Pete. Not telling yet!

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

I think it's time for the answer

Which is, rather disappointingly, nothing special - Olympus EM5ii with the 17mm f2.8. That lens is one of the two lenses released with the E-P1, so one of Oly's first two Micro 4/3 lenses. It's nothing special - quite a lot of barrel distortion and chromatic abberation, but not a lot of character either IMO. None of which matters at all for this kind of shot.

And in fairness it is a perfectly usable lens, especially I suppose as the aberrations are corrected in software by default.... I think I had the corrections switched off though, and pushed and pulled the colours around and added grain in developing the Raw file. The Lensbaby look is just from the shallow depth of field in combination with the subject I think, but I agree it does have that look.

To make up (?) for the boring answer to the quiz, here's another of (I think) the same seed head. After I bumped into it.

 

[Ralph Turner]

Great shot, Steve. I love the backlit glow and the feeling of it being a half-frame film image. Lovely

(Btw, does having the sunlight shining through it change it from a dandelion clock to a sun dial? - ahem, I’ll get my coat )

 

[Brian Moore]

That is a beautiful shot of the dandelion (pre-bump), Stevenson. If you hadn't already revealed the answer I would have guessed a toy camera of some kind. As Ralph suggested it's very much like a film image.

 

[Dave Farnes]

That is a fine shot, it does have a grainy film look to it.

 

[Rob MacKillop]

It's a cracking shot. I've seen so many of this subject, and have done a few myself, but this is one of the more interesting. Well done.

 

[Stevenson Gawen]

Thanks Ralph, Brian, Dave and Rob! Appreciate your thoughts very much