Happy Mothers' Day?

My wife's anniversary roses have served their purpose and have seenbetter days, but I wanted to play with some new lenses and lightingbefore they got thrown out.

This shot was lit with a Sunpak 544 flash at 1/4 power fired into areflective umbrella handheld somewhat above and to camera left. Asheet of white styrofoam at lower right provided some fill. It wastaken through my 41-year-old Nikon 50/1.4 lens mated to my Canon DSLRbody. Compared to my other fast 50mm lenses, this Nikkor is huge, notquite as sharp, and has a long minimum focusing distance, but it'sstill worth the $20 I paid just for its old-school aesthetic value.

This is a different, but very similar, shot from the B&W version Iposted. I think the postprocessing gives it something of an "oldmasters painting" feel. Which do you prefer?