Last days of peonies

[Airy]

Fooling around with the 24/3.5 PC-E, and some tilt, and some PP by the way.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

the flowers look beautiful, as peonies tend to do, but the harsh edges of the purple out-of-focus blurs in the background might indicate a little too much of saturation boost.

Not sure what the 24 PC gained you of an advantage here apart from being a wide-angle lens. Did you apply tilt?

[Airy]

Luminance boost only, on peony colours (magenta + some purple). The drawback is however what you observed; remove the luminance boost and the bokeh is nice but I the miss the glow. The evening light was low and I exposed accordingly. There was some downward tilt to "fit" the top of the flower, but very approximate (grab shot, handheld). The main gain of the PC-E here is the close-up ability.

I have just tried to soften the edges using radial filters and reducing clarity, which improves the resut but does not fully work. Luminance boost was just too heavy I guess.