I thinki I finally did it....

[Midnight2]

capture a decent FCB flower. My last Daffy attempt was pretty miserable. I don't know how you guys do it. I thought it wouldn't be all that hard, but it was. Especially getting those whites right. No processing here except resizing (which I diminishes the quality a bit - again, how do you guys do it)

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. f7 .67sec spot metering. I used Aperture mode.



--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[JP Scherrer]

Hi ! I see that thru the northern emisphere we all have the same flowers at about the same time...
It's true that these whites are difficult to catch...

Go have a look at the latest pics of daffodils and narcisses, Lo-Key and Hi-Key, at http://www.pbase.com/scherrer/nature

Cheers,
Jean-Pierre
Geneva, Switzerland

 

[marek k]

I think you could have pushed it another 0.3 or 0.7 stops. Or maybe its just my need to see brilliant whites coming through!

Nice shot, I like the balance from the shape of the flower.

capture a decent FCB flower. My last Daffy attempt was pretty
miserable. I don't know how you guys do it. I thought it wouldn't
be all that hard, but it was. Especially getting those whites
right. No processing here except resizing (which I diminishes the
quality a bit - again, how do you guys do it)

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. f7 .67sec spot
metering. I used Aperture mode.



--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

--
-marek

Some of my photos: http://members.optusnet.com.au/~okocim/photos/
Photosig: http://www.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=67375

 

[rapick]

.67 sec ... definitely, I have to buy a good tripod, after I sold my old one at the end of my film career !

Just, I found your whites a bit too grey for my taste. Never seen a grey flower ... so I tried stretching a little the tonal range in PS.
Here's the result:



Do you like it?

By the way: why are you posting .bmp files? I converted to relatively low compression .jpg and got it 20 times smaller, with negligible losses, I guess.
Ciao.
--
Rapick
http://www.pbase.com/rapick

capture a decent FCB flower. My last Daffy attempt was pretty
miserable. I don't know how you guys do it. I thought it wouldn't
be all that hard, but it was. Especially getting those whites
right. No processing here except resizing (which I diminishes the
quality a bit - again, how do you guys do it)

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. f7 .67sec spot
metering. I used Aperture mode.



--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Muriel S]

Beauty of a daffodil. Reminds me to get to the acres and acres of them in Litchfield county, CT.

Yesterday temp went from 88 to 34. Thought daffs would die, but they actually bloomed. It's 9:12 a.m. and they are in bloom - first day.

--
Muriel - 995, 950, 775, WC-63, TC-2E
DPR and Pbase supporter
FCAS Charter Member

 

[Midnight2]

I'm convinced now it takes at least 10 pair of eyes to see a photo properly. Thanks all for being my eyes.

Marek - when you say pushed another .3 or .7 stops do you mean narrowing the apeture and wouldn't that make it darker? Or should I have set the EV to +3 or +7. Mine was set to 0. I was really trying to get those brilliant whites to come through.

Rapick - wow, much better. How'd you do that? Looking at this last night in my monitor I thought those whites were pretty WHITE, but you manipulation really brought them out!

I posted a .jpg file at about 90k. Not sure why you would get a .bmp. Oh, I just tried to 'save' from the posted image and it only gives a BMP option which when saved is 1 mb !!! Wow. Don't know why this is. The file on pBase is as mentioned above.

Muriel - weather out there is really crazy. A friend just came in from Chicago and said it was in the 80's with snow on the ground!

midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Midnight2]

JP, love the hi-key daffy's best. Beauty. So now tell me, what does Hi-Key mean?

Boy, do I have a lot to learn, eh?

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Midnight2]

I was hoping you could clarify your idea about pushing fstops as I outlined in the last post. I'm really trying to learn this stuff. Who would think photographing a flower could be so hard. It is for a beginner I guess.

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[QuangL]

I think he meant increase the exposure. This can be accomplished by either using your exp. compensation, open the apperture (use smaller number) or decrease the shutter speed (also smaller number, though this can be confusing. Actually, the shutter speed is expressed in 1/xx second. So if you want to increase the exposure, you should decrease the speed, i.e. use LARGER fractional number such as 1/60 instead of 1/125. Most often, though, the bottom number is all you see, i.e. 60 or 125.) hope this helps.
Quang.

I was hoping you could clarify your idea about pushing fstops as I
outlined in the last post. I'm really trying to learn this stuff.
Who would think photographing a flower could be so hard. It is
for a beginner I guess.

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Frank Vigil]

Midnight:

A very fine shot indeed! I love this flower. I did think though, that the processing could have stood a bit of tweaking. I took the liberty of downloading your post and tweaking it just a bit (with my newly installed new hard drive(S) and newly installed PS 7.0. I adjusted the curves and levels a bit and on my monitor, the photo is a bit more vibrant, less muddy and jumps out at me more. Of course, this may not be the case on other monitors.

After you've looked at this, I'll remove it from my site.

Midnight's Flower Reprocessed



Frank

capture a decent FCB flower. My last Daffy attempt was pretty
miserable. I don't know how you guys do it. I thought it wouldn't
be all that hard, but it was. Especially getting those whites
right. No processing here except resizing (which I diminishes the
quality a bit - again, how do you guys do it)

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. f7 .67sec spot
metering. I used Aperture mode.



--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

--
Whimsy is salvation for a life taken too seriously.
http://www.pbase.com/poetrunner/root

 

[Midnight2]

It looks so good I saved Your copy! I'm honored.

Truth is there was No processing done on this except to resize. I felt it had potential though and I was pretty sure I had achieved a pic with no blown highlights and pretty good white (hidden under there somewhere). I had in fact tried many shots playing around with ap, EV and shutter speed. Problem is, I'm such a novice I think I jump around too much. I AM trying to learn in a logical manner, though.

I'd really like to learn how to get this stuff right straight out of the camera....is it possible?
--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Frank Vigil]

Midnight:

That is a question that has many answers, all of which include "that depends..." There's nothing wrong with doing minor adjustments in post processing (in spite of what some people say). Of course, you want to get the best possible exposure in the camera. But the "that depends" includes so many different factors, from light direction and intensity, subject matter, subject reflection, background, subject color and contrast, camera dynamic range (lattitude), etc.

You chose a subject that has very delicate nuances, very little color and somewhat flat lighting. My adjustments were so minor as to not even warrant mentioning, except for the fact that people here enjoy knowing these things.

In my 20 + years in a color darkroom, I rarely had a print that I wasn't dodging, burning, feathering, or doing something to make it as good as possible. I pushed and pulled the exposure/processing, played with different developers and papers, I did all sorts of things.

It's good to practice and make it as good as can be, but don't punish yourself for doing something aftwards, it's all part of the process that combines to make the final product.

Frank

I'd really like to learn how to get this stuff right straight out
of the camera....is it possible?
--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

--
Whimsy is salvation for a life taken too seriously.
http://www.pbase.com/poetrunner/root

 

[Midnight2]

Well, Frank, I think it's a comfort to know that the film world has to tweak their pics just as much I guess. I would like to learn how to take the best pics first. That may take a while.

Tell me this. Given my photo and the conditions, do you think I could have achieved a better result (like your tweak) in camera, perhaps with +EV setting. I did try other combinations but resulted in blown highlights. I guess I need to learn to judge when I've captured the best photo and when I need to keep trying.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for the benefit of your experience.

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Phillip Tornero]

capture a decent FCB flower. My last Daffy attempt was pretty
miserable. I don't know how you guys do it. I thought it wouldn't
be all that hard, but it was. Especially getting those whites
right. No processing here except resizing (which I diminishes the
quality a bit - again, how do you guys do it)

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. f7 .67sec spot
metering. I used Aperture mode.



--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

Hello that is a very nice picture of a daffy. Bravo! hats off to you! Keep it up, you really make me think of warm summer days!

 

[Midnight2]

I was trying hard on this one and it Smells great. Warmth soon I hope

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Ed Nazarko]

I liked Frank's version best, it had white whites, without going flat in any place, what I liked about the original is that it had texture and dimension even in the "flat" petals. We think of flower petals as "white" - we don't think of them as intensely textured, and that's what I like about your image, it extends beyond what we "remember."

I don't think you can get it right the first time in the camera reliably. I find that I always start shooting where I think the exposure's right, and then shoot a little underexposed, a lot underexposed, and a little overexposed. I almost always end up using one of the underexposed images, and then bringing some portion of the image up to white, as Frank did. Images exposed for white whites always seem blown out.

I didn't ever do color darkroom, but in the B&W darkroom, I spent days working on a picture like this trying to find the point at which the flower was unmistakeably white, and it still had the texture that made it interesting. White things and black things are the hardest. In the shooting process, both will either tend towards grey, or towards loss of definition. Much easier to find the balance afterwards - but to do that, you usually need four or five different exposures to work with. And patience.

I have an image I'll post this evening, of white mountain laurel. Based on looking at the files on my laptop, I shot 5 of every composition. I didn't get a few images because the wind blew during a couple of the exposure changes, and I didn't notice, so I lost the "perfect" exposure, and in some cases the image. Thank whatever gods there may be that I wasn't working with film, that would have been a $30 session just in film. As it is, I just need to blow away the bits.

That is a stunning flower, by the way. Wish mine would come up. One lonely daffodil in my yard, and cold damaged to boot.

That is a question that has many answers, all of which include
"that depends..." There's nothing wrong with doing minor
adjustments in post processing (in spite of what some people say).
Of course, you want to get the best possible exposure in the
camera. But the "that depends" includes so many different factors,
from light direction and intensity, subject matter, subject
reflection, background, subject color and contrast, camera dynamic
range (lattitude), etc.

You chose a subject that has very delicate nuances, very little
color and somewhat flat lighting. My adjustments were so minor as
to not even warrant mentioning, except for the fact that people
here enjoy knowing these things.

In my 20 + years in a color darkroom, I rarely had a print that I
wasn't dodging, burning, feathering, or doing something to make it
as good as possible. I pushed and pulled the exposure/processing,
played with different developers and papers, I did all sorts of
things.

It's good to practice and make it as good as can be, but don't
punish yourself for doing something aftwards, it's all part of the
process that combines to make the final product.

Frank

I'd really like to learn how to get this stuff right straight out
of the camera....is it possible?
--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

--
Whimsy is salvation for a life taken too seriously.
http://www.pbase.com/poetrunner/root

--
Ed

Make pictures, don't take them - it leaves more for others.

http://www.onemountainphoto.com

 

[R Dunlop]

Hi,

My first comment is the whites appear on the 'grey' side. What kind of lighting are you using? It looks as though the picture was taken in medium shade? It's not the camera or the operator, just needs a brighter light source I think?

--
Hotworks

 

[guapa]

Hi,

My first comment is the whites appear on the 'grey' side. What
kind of lighting are you using? It looks as though the picture was
taken in medium shade? It's not the camera or the operator, just
needs a brighter light source I think?

--
Hotworks

Its perfect !! congrats!! witch camera did you use?? i got trouble focus the 4500 ,can you expain to me slowly how you did it?? thanks

Lucia .

 

[Midnight2]

I live in Portland,Oregon. does that explain it? Portland is famous for lots of rain and it's been pretty grey around here lately.

The flower was on a table by a big window, all natural Portland light

See above, Frank's tweaks. He brought out the whites beautifully.

Hi,

My first comment is the whites appear on the 'grey' side. What
kind of lighting are you using? It looks as though the picture was
taken in medium shade? It's not the camera or the operator, just
needs a brighter light source I think?

--
Hotworks

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.

 

[Midnight2]

I'm pleased you liked my picture, thank you:

Spot metering
f7
1/2 second exposure
macro mode
Black Foam Core Board background
Table top tripod
Self Timer - (pain in the butt with the 4500)

I tried many combinations before I got lucky. I had a problem focusing too sometimes. But would half-press the shutter to see if the camera would focus properly.

Good Luck

Its perfect !! congrats!! witch camera did you use?? i got trouble
focus the 4500 ,can you expain to me slowly how you did it?? thanks

Lucia .

--
midnight2, CP775, 4500, Portland, Or.