Close-up, Flora, OM-1, Photography, Tasmania

Greenhood Orchids

Last week walking Ralphie up in the bush, I stumbled upon a small group of endemic Pterostylis – Greenhood Orchids beside a fire-trail under a tree. I only had my phone and took a few shots. I returned the next morning armed with the OM1 and a few prime lenses.

Laowa 7.5mm f2.0 – 1/20 sec; f/16.0; ISO 200

The first two shots give an overview of the forest where they are situated, on an exposed north facing ridge where there is not much growth after a “controlled” burn-off a few years ago and a pretty dry winter.

Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 – 1/20 sec; f/13; ISO 1600

In the following macro shots, I was mainly trying to capture the translucent hood which looks delicate and alien like.

M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 60mm F2.8 Macro – 1/20 sec; f/13; ISO 1600

The shot below is an in-camera “focus stacked” image, made up of 15 images at different focal points. I was photobombed by an ant during exposure! The movement of the flower also resulted in some fringing or ghosting around the edges.

Below is a single image from the stack above that has the ant in relative focus. You can see a single frame has much less depth of focus compared to the stacked one above. The stacked version is also cropped in camera.

“During summer the very small parviflora – tiny greenhood- is common on dry mudstone hills and open forest locations around Hobart.”
There’s more information on Greenhoods HERE.

These orchids can be difficult to spot, but looking for them and being observant in the bush is fun.
I hope you enjoyed my lucky find. Thanks for visiting 😀

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TasView (Tone)

Tone Bacon - Tasmanian photographer. tasview.com

23 thoughts on “Greenhood Orchids”

    1. Thanks Ted, I hope your enjoying the OM System. I used to shoot with Nikon but no looking back, there’s too many good Olympus exclusive features!
      Most of my lenses were purchased second-hand 😉 It’s worth keeping an eye out for ones you are after as barely used bargains can be found if your patient. I was extremely lucky with my Olympus 75-300 f4.8-6.7 II, the seller had it listed with an EM10 II and was off overseas. I sold the camera and kept the lens almost for free!

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      1. I always check both KEH.com and MPB.com first when looking for a lens. I got a like new Leica Panasonic 100-400 with a trade in of a like new Canon 7D2. My wife is also a photog so we have backups to backups of gear 😂.

        Thanks Ted

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      2. Handy if you both use the same system for lens swapping, and a good excuse to get more 😉 Generally my lenses are in the mid/budget range but they are lighter and smaller than the pro range which suites me. I did a comparison between the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-150mm F4.0-5.6 II and the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-40mm F2.8 PRO. Honestly, even pixel peeping there was not much in it, the only advantage of the Pro is in lower light. The 14-150mm lives on my camera as my go-to and covers 90% of what I want to shoot.

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  5. Orchids are so different from each other – so many types of shapes, colour, design. I think that is part of the fascination people have with them. These are different from anything I’ve ever seen. Nice photos of them.

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    1. Thanks Anneli,
      The next two post will show two more very different orchids I’ve found in the same area close to home. There’s a couple more types too but they seem to be absent this year due to the dryer winter weather. We had a big lightning storm pass through the night before last, so maybe that good soaking rain might bring some on 😀

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    1. Thank you 😀 It took me a while to get the best out of the 60mm macro but it’s a lovely lens. I forgot to mention, I’m using DxO Photolab 6 for noise reduction and main editing, then Photoshop CS6 to finish up with levels, minor spot edits and resizing for web publishing.

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    1. Thanks Morgaine, I often walk over 5km through the bush tracks in the morning, usually with my eyes to the ground and don’t find much. But sometimes I get a lovely surprise 😀 This area is also a great spot to find ancient sea shell fossils, even though it is 300m above sea level.

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