Flower #1, Irving Penn Homage

Susan is bringing plants in for the winter and I noticed this bloom hanging on, just barely.  The subject is just right for an homage to Irving Penn's series of flowers.

Technical: Nikon D700, Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8 AF, ISO 200, WB daylight, f/22.0 @ 1/13s, Manfrotto Pro tripod with Manfrotto 488RC2 ball head.  This is my first macro shot with the ball head and I must say that I'm very happy.  RAW file processed in Lightroom 2.4.  It is very stable, no hint of drift with the camera and lens sitting at about 85 degrees down.  Main light is a Calumet Quattro dish with four flicker free daylight balanced 35 watt fluorescent bulbs.  This is the first time I've used fluorescent lights for a color shot, so I took a little extra time to calibrate the system using the Xrite Colorchecker Passport.  The Passport comes with a Lightroom plug-in that recognizes the target and generates a custom camera profile.  It worked perfectly.  Below is the uncalibrated calibration shot straight out of the camera.  Note how dingy the red flower below is compared to the calibrated flower above.

It turns out the fluorescent lights are close, but not exactly daylight balanced.  The Colorchecker Passport correction sets the temperature to 5150K and adds +20 magenta.