FLOWERS AS ART With the Sony 100-400mm f/4.5 GM Lens

Summary

Tuesday morning dawned still, dark, dreary, overcast, and threatening. I had hoped that there would be a good-sized rain pool at Nickerson as the overnight rain had stopped just after I arrived at about 6:30am. I walked to the top of the west footbridge and saw only two small puddles, each filled with Canada Geese. As I had been making lots of fabulous flock blurs and every flag in sight was hanging straight down, I thought, “flowers with the 100-400 f/4.5.” So I drove the few minutes to Lido Beach Passive Nature Area just across the road and slightly east of Nickerson Beach Park and went to work. On ridiculously calm days with no- to low-light conditions, wildflowers make ideal subjects. Keep reading to learn how to create FLOWERS AS ART.

Your Call?

Which are the two strongest photos? Which one does not float your boat at all?

In the Last Blog Post

Thanks to the many who commented on the last post. My first choice was the sunset silhouette for its serendipitous beauty. I thought the short blastoff video was pretty neat and that the skimmer as pterodactyl blur was interesting as well.

BIRDS AS ART SONY A9 iii Images

Sony a-9 iii Mirrorless Camera Body

Price reduced $500.00 on 4 September 2026

Multiple IPT veteran, Used Gear Page regular, and dear student and friend Pat Fishburne is offering a Sony a9 iii Mirrorless camera in like-new condition for a ridiculously low $3,798.00. The sale includes the original product box, the body cap, the battery charger, one battery, the strap, and insured ground shipping via major courier to lower-48 US addresses only.

Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Your purchase will also include my two a9 iii Set-up e-mails.

Please contact Pat via e-mail.

At one point I loved my a9 iii so much for flight and action that I sold two a-1 bodies and purchased a second a9 iii. Working at 120fps gives you four times as many wing positions and flight poses as any other mirrorless camera body. Most every single image will be sharp on the eye. The raw files can stand up to decent crops and in addition, Topaz Gigapixel does a fabulous job of upsizing a9 iii TIF files. A new a9 iii sells at B&H for $$6,398.00. B&H has a used one in stock in 9 condition for $$4,911.95. If you have been dreaming of 120 fps with global shutter for flight and action, grab Pat’s pretty much brand new one right now and save an absolute ton of dollars. artie artie

What’s Up?

After one cool fall-like chilly morning, we have not seen the sun and it has been hot and muggy. We went to the US Open Tennis on Tuesday night and watched Top-seeded German Alexander Zverev survive a massive first-round scare, outlasting Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (7), 7-5, 6-4 in a grueling 4-hour and 52-minute thriller. Someone forgot to tell Sonego, ranked 89th in the world, that he was supposed to lose quickly. The match ended at 2:00am. After the long walk to my car I made the drive back to Freeport in 28 minutes and fell asleep just after 4:00am. I slept fitfully till 9:30, missing my first morning of photography since arriving on Long Island on 4 August.

We started in Row Q in the upper deck, level five and, after much of the crowd had headed home, watched the fifth and deciding set from Row B at the corner of the court.

Today is Tuesday 4 September 2026. The forecast for the morning calling for clear and sunny with a NW wind; I opted to stay in! We will spend the afternoon looking for shorebirds at Heckscher State Park and then join my younger daughter Alissa and her husband Ajiniyaz Reimov for dinner at their home in Ronkonkoma. Whatever you opt to do, I hope that you choose to have fun and enjoy life. Please remember that happiness is a choice — Byron Katie – The Work.Com

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This image was created on 1 September 2026 by yours truly at the Lido Beach Passive Nature Area. Standing at full height, I used the Robus RC-5570 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5 GM OSS lens (at 400mm) and The Latest Greatest Sony Flagship Body, the a-1 II Mirrorless Camera. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 1000: 1/15 second at f/5.6 (stopped down 2/3-stop) in Manual mode. AWB at 6:39:59 am on a still, dreary, overcast morning with lots of mosquitoes. Manual Focus with RED Focus Peaking (magnified). Click on the image to enjoy a larger high-res version. Image #1: Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Choose Your Blossom and Your Perspective Carefully

There were dozens of coneflower and blanket flower blossoms along the edge of the parking lot. Most were in very poor condition. The isolated flower in #1 jumped out at me as being in peak condition, pretty much flawless. The trick was to put myself in the exact spot that yielded the cleanest possible background. As I knew that I wanted to shoot slightly down at the flower, I simply moved right and left to find a relatively sweet background free of the stalks of other blossoms as they can be very distracting.

This image was also created on 1 September 2026 by yours truly at the Lido Beach Passive Nature Area. Standing at full height, I used the Robus RC-5570 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 2x Teleconverter (at 800mm) and The Latest Greatest Sony Flagship Body, the a-1 II Mirrorless Camera. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 500: 1/13 second at f/9 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 7:05:31am on a still, dreary, overcast morning with lots of mosquitoes. Manual Focus with RED Focus Peaking (magnified). Click on the image to enjoy a larger high-res version. Image #2: Cypress Vine (Ipomoea quamoclit)

Cypress Vine Blossoms Caught My Eye

Cypress Vine is a fast-growing, heat-loving annual climbing vine featuring delicate, fern-like foliage and small, bright-red star-shaped flowers that attract hummingbirds and butterflies. It is in the Morning Glory family.

Plenty of Depth of Field

As the plant vine was growing on a pole holding a sign about 8 feet inside the garden that was protected by a low chain fence, I could not get any closer. So I added the 2x TC for additional reach to get more pixels on the tiny subject. It was the distance to the subject that gave me plenty of depth of field even at the wide open aperture of f/9.

This image was also created on 1 September 2026 by yours truly at the Lido Beach Passive Nature Area. Standing at full height, I used the Robus RC-5570 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 2x Teleconverter (at 552mm) and The Latest Greatest Sony Flagship Body, the a-1 II Mirrorless Camera. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 500: 1/13 second at f/9 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 7:12:22am on a still, dreary, overcast morning with lots of mosquitoes. Manual Focus with RED Focus Peaking (magnified). Click on the image to enjoy a larger high-res version. Image #3: Indian Blanket Flower (Gaillardia pulchella)

The Technique

Once I found the ideal perspective for each image, I positioned the tripod, mounted the lens, and framed the shot. Loosening the black lever on the Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro allowed me to point the lens as needed by placing the stem of the ball in the cutout slot on the side of the world’s best tripod head. For #1 and #3, the lens was angled well down.

Next, I set a shutter speed and an aperture. Sony Zebra technology made getting an excellent exposure easy — I simply raised the ISO until I saw some Zebra’s on the brightest parts of the blossom. I tightened all of the tripod and lens controls, focused manually using Focus Peaking with magnification, and set the self timer. I keep that at 5 seconds to avoid any vibrations resulting from my pushing the shutter button. I generally make several frames of each flower from a given position to guard against even a slight breeze causing unsharpness.

This image was also created on 1 September 2026 by yours truly at the Lido Beach Passive Nature Area. Again, standing at full height, I used the Robus RC-5570 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 100-400mm f/4.5 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter (at 560mm) and The Latest Greatest Sony Flagship Body, the a-1 II Mirrorless Camera. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 500: 1/40 second at f/6.3 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 7:23:30am on a still, dreary, overcast morning with lots of mosquitoes. Manual Focus with RED Focus Peaking (magnified). Click on the image to enjoy a larger high-res version. Image #4: sunflower petals — spent

Sony 100-400mm f/4.5 GM Lens Flower Versatility

Note that #1 was created with the bare lens and that I used the 2X TC for #s 2 and 3 and the 1.4X for the last image. Just as when photographing birds, adding either teleconverter when photographing flowers, you can increase the versatility of the 100-400 constant aperture lens by leaps and bounds. The relatively short Minimum Focusing Distance is another plus for flower photography.

My Mistake

My big error with #4 was not raising the ISO so that I could dial in a lot more depth of field. Why? Going from left to right the first and the third petals were on this side of the too-narrow depth of field. I focused on the stringy end of the bedraggled second petal. As a result, the 2nd and 4th petals were sharp. The first and the third were not. In an attempt to improve the image I selected the two soft petals and applied Topaz Super Focus to the layer.

Typos

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