TOW - Digital Photography of Plants and subsequent manipulation of images for printing, the web etc.

John Lonsdale john@johnlonsdale.net
Sun, 15 Dec 2002 19:27:16 PST
Arnold,

That's an interesting question and I think my solution probably flies in the
face of conventional wisdom.  I say the latter because a professional
photographer who often stops by here prays for cloudy or rainy days prior to
her visit.  I take a lot of close-up, or relatively close-up images and need
good depth of field to get everything in focus that I want.  To do this I
need a small aperture, hence if I have any choice in the matter I take my
photos on sunny days, with the subject in full sun or very good light.  You
do have to watch for shadows on the subject giving excessive contrast across
the image put careful positioning works pretty well.  I use matrix metering
as my exposure control and get evenly exposed images, usually requiring
little adjustment.  Color rendition seems excellent and I've never had
obvious (to my eyes) discrepancies between the colors I see and those
captured by the camera and rendered on screen or print.  I also like the
vibrancy introduced by sunlight - pictures taken without it seem rather flat
in comparison.  I very rarely use flash, if I have to then it is the built
in flash that I use, no backlights, nothing fancy.  With respect to detail I
find that the Coolpix 995 gives outstanding results both close up and from
afar.  I mentioned I do sharpen all images - needed whatever the camera or
source of the image and I use PS to do this.  The camera's sharpening option
is turned off - I like to get something off the camera that has not been
manipulated at all, the latter can be done better and more consistently in
PS.

J.

Dr John T Lonsdale
407 Edgewood Drive,
Exton, Pennsylvania 19341,  USA

Phone: 610 594 9232
Fax: 801 327 1266

Visit "Edgewood" - The Lonsdale Garden at http://www.johnlonsdale.net/

Zone 6b


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