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Anything relating to Cacti or CactiGuide.com that doesn't fit in another category should be posted under General.
daiv
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Post by daiv »

peterb wrote:wow, wonderful photos! I have yet to see a Yavia in person. :-)

peterb
Go visit Craig Fry... :wink:
All Cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are Cacti
süleyman
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Post by süleyman »

thanks friends :)

... see my new post !..
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hob
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Post by hob »

hairy matacuna flowers Image
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Pachycereus pringlei growing point
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new pad

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Thelocactus bicolor

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Echinocereus
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mamm seed
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cor wassat smell :shock:
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incurable cactoholic
growing rebutia's with a mix of others.
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hegar
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Post by hegar »

Hello Hob,
what does the last plant you pictured smell like? The blossom color could almost be described like that of meat. Is it one of these plants with a rotten meat smell?

Harald
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parrotsheaven
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Post by parrotsheaven »

ihc6480 wrote: Antbody tell me why I get the hazyness around the outside edges :-k
Bill I had this problem too and I was told to if I could to set the aperature thingy to F8.0 if I could. Finally got round to reading a bit on how to use my camera and found I could change it. I was using auto all the time :lol:

I still get fuzzy ones when its cloudy so got to have a bright day. Just took these to show you the difference.

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Betty
süleyman
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Post by süleyman »

great shots, Hob :)
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hob
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Post by hob »

parrotsheaven wrote:
ihc6480 wrote: Antbody tell me why I get the hazyness around the outside edges :-k
Bill I had this problem too and I was told to if I could to set the aperature thingy to F8.0 if I could. Finally got round to reading a bit on how to use my camera and found I could change it. I was using auto all the time :lol:

I still get fuzzy ones when its cloudy so got to have a bright day. Just took these to show you the difference.
Betty
Bill, Betty, its called depth of field (or focus)
imagine a point in front of the camera where the subject is in focus and another point behind that where it goes out of focus again, the closer you get to the subject the smaller the depth of field gets, also the "f" number makes a difference to the depth of field the lower the number the smaller the depth of field.
the "f" number is linked to the shutter speed, as the "f" number goes up the shutter speed comes down, then you need a steady camera to avoid camera shake (blur caused by camera movement)

i find bright sunlight distorts colours too, so the ideal shooting time would be in bright shade with the camera on a tripod.

ok now lets talk camera settings, look in your camera settings and you will find settings for picture size and\or quality a lot of people make the mistake of setting those both on the lowest setting to get more images on the camera chip. memory is cheap now and a big card on those settings will hold thousands of images, so wind up the size and quality to somewhere in the middle of the options offered (a compromise between quality and number of images on the card)

right now we have the image shot in bright shade at F8 to F16 with minimal camera shake and reasonable size and quality, what's the next step ??

editing on the computer, I'm not getting too complicated here because software varies so much, however most software will resize an image to "fit to window" so you see the whole image click on view and look for something like "actual size" you will be amazed at how much the image zooms in :shock: :shock: scroll or drag the image around and see where the image has gone in and out of focus that's your "depth of field"

there are whole books on photo shooting and whole books on photo editing so that's just a basic guide on how its done.

all the shots in my last set were taken on a non slr camera using the above method and zooming out a shade from actual size and cropping, a bit of manipulation of the contrast and brightness followed by a small ammount of sharpening.
i usually resize to 600 pixels wide too for 2 reasons 1 it fits the page here 2 it reduces the size cactiguide needs to store on its server to less than 100 Kb per image. :D
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growing rebutia's with a mix of others.
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hob
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Post by hob »

hegar wrote:Hello Hob,
what does the last plant you pictured smell like? The blossom color could almost be described like that of meat. Is it one of these plants with a rotten meat smell?

Harald
hi Harald, yes its a succulent that is pollinated by flies ........so the smell is rotten meat :roll:Image
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parrotsheaven
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Post by parrotsheaven »

Thanks Hob I have it worked now. I can only get to F8 but with the cropping and a little sharpening they are coming out ok :D
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I am really enjoying this post and eveyone is putting in some GREAT photos :P

Betty
ihc6480
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Post by ihc6480 »

Ok, good info Hob. My camera has manual settings also such as Aperture, shutter speed, flash compensation, exposure compensation and ISO speed.

Time to do some reading and experimenting :)
Bill

If it sticks ya or pokes ya, I like it
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CoronaCactus
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Post by CoronaCactus »

A few more to add to the pile :D

Astrophytum asterias 'SuperKabuto'
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Astrophytum myriostigma
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Ariocarpus retusus
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Copiapoa cinerea v. delbata
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Cochemiea poselgeri
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Cereus spegazinnii
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Echinocereus pectinatus ssp. rubrispinus
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Echinocereus reichenbachii v. albispinus
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Espostoa blossfeldiorum
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Faucaria felina v. tuberculosa 'Sato'
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Mammillaria sphaerica
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Matucana madisoniorum v. albiflora
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Thelocactus heterochromus
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hob
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Post by hob »

nice ones 8) is that Faucaria a monstrose form?
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CoronaCactus
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Post by CoronaCactus »

I don't think so, it's a Japanese cultivar.
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lancer99
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Post by lancer99 »

Wow, what great pics!

I can't take really close up pics coz of my crap-tastic camera, but here are my contributions:

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Cheers,
-R
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CoronaCactus
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Post by CoronaCactus »

Nice ones Robert!
Dig those Dorstenia flowers 8)
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