@betazoid: Thanks for the pre-set!
@Thomas_Do: You always surprise me with the modules you use to get really nice results. I would have left out the velvia module, but that, again, is a taste thing.
@paulmiller: Just beautiful! Too bad I cannot have a better look in your kitchen 
You have got to love Play Raw and its participants…
Used Gimp
One try in B&W (decompose and ply with layer modes)
Here is an essential RT 5.8 result. Tweaked it a bit using GIMP (lowered the highlights a bit)
raindrops.on.flower.nef.pp3 (12.2 KB)
That was fun. I really like that picture. Wonder, how it would look if shot with f/11
I tried to be very careful with contrasts, even I usually like hard looks, for this picture a more gentle touch is hopefully a nice attempt.
dt 3.1
Thanks!
I’m curious why you specifically mention this. Care to elaborate on that?
This lens goes all the way up to f/32 and I knew I would be rather close (40-45cm) to the subject and the DOF would thus be rather limited. Hence the f/20 setting. With hindsight I know I should have upped the ISO value and used f/22 (f/25?).
Using f/11 instead of f/20 would have roughly cut my DOF in halve, which was already in the lower centimetre range.
I did overestimate its VR capabilities and that is the main reason why this one isn’t as sharp as I wanted it to be. Valuable lesson learned 
BTW: That’s a nice soft edit.
Been a bit busy with household stuff, but the challenges of this one caught my attention…
IMHO an image like this grabs attention with it’s clarity, and hand-holding the capture definitely challenges that. Made me want to do all manner of denoise and sharpen, but I backed out most of that for the final rendition. I abandoned the filmic curve and went with a control-point curve that let me twist it in non-parametric ways, looking for the contrast in the droplets. I added a bit of color saturation to make the yellow-ish background stand out from the high-key blue-ish foreground. From rawproc:
Flowers typically provide an abundance of symmetry with which to compose; this one challenges that notion. For an alternate take, I went crop-hunting, looking for lines to construct a composition; in the south-west quadrant I found this:
Abstract art it is, if you look at it whilst patting your head and with a finger up your nose… 
I was thinking of diffraction blur and shutter speed, as I also thought of VR limitations. But you are right, f/11 would have left you with 8mm DOF, wide open even only 2mm
Agree, and I failed doing just that by doing a hand-held, (too) low shutter-speed shot. It’s also something you cannot “fix” in post, although some of the renditions in this thread do a pretty good job camouflaging my shortcoming! I personally think that going the soft way doesn’t really work that well but that might be just my taste speaking.
I like your alternate. The crop in general but especially that it really brings out the yellowish vs blueish that you put emphasizes on.
@gaaned92: Nice!
