Daily Archives: June 11, 2020

Wild Iris

The Wild Iris, also called the Blue Flag Iris, is one of the most beautiful and widespread wildflowers of late spring / early summer in North America. I wait patiently for this reliable clump, a the edge of a pond along one of our local roads, to bloom each year. Generally I can catch them on at least one sunny day, but this year they were in full bloom on the first of day of several days of overcast and rain. Still beautiful. I used Program Shift to select f16 for this shot…to increase depth of field, and selectively focused on the closest Iris. Though I say that, I was also using HDR mode to help keep detail in the cloudy sky…so, while the recorded aperture is indeed f16, at a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second (ISO 100 and an exposure bias of -1 (again for detail in the clouds)…some of the individual exposures for the HDR will have varied one or more of those settings. At any rate, I was pleased with the results. I try to avoid anything under f5.6 in general shooting, as the Sony lens is sharpest near wide open, but this, I think, worked. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.