I continue working on macros of the Christmas cactus, which in reality, has more to do with learning how to work the many different set-ups in the camera then the content which only shows me if what I'm doing is working or not.

This is showing one of the earlier blooms on the left,  that is now on the way out and a new bloom that recently opened. I like that range of sharpness of the image. This is photographed with a 35mm extension tube on a Sigma 70mm macro and 24 stacked images.

A couple weeks ago we bought another Christmas cactus which we thought was like the one you see above. Not so!  Each bulb instead of opening with hanging stamen, opens facing upwards with all the stamens inside. 

There are dozen of blooms on the cactus and they open upwards. The photo below is an effort to photograph the interior of the bloom.

If you click on the image you can see that each stamen is a stalk coming out of the middle of the bloom.  My hope is that they will stand upright and one can see inside the stalks. I assume the white inside the stalks is the pistol but won't be sure until it opens (if it does).