Photography

[David Pilling]

Edit by Martin: Split from July photos. after me  editing one of Arnolds pictures from



to



/ edit by Martin

Martin, that's a remarkable result on Arnold's photo, for saying you're stuck with an 8 bit version, whilst the original might be available in raw format (with many more brightness levels).

[Martin Bohnet]

You usually don't need raw format unless you want to do something fancy for printing - levels correction is all about really using those 3x8 bit. definitely the 1st thing to do when there's that gray veil on an image.

[David Pilling]

Well... if you look at the histogram 8 bit processing often looks bad - you don't have many levels and you're pushing everything towards a limited range. You've got the extra bits with RAW (for free) why not use them.

Should we have a forum topic where we criticise people's photos and tell them how to fix them

[Martin Bohnet]

Should we have a forum topic where we criticise people's photos and tell them how to fix them

one could say that a little bit nicer, but I've heard worse ideas... Actually, a photography corner is not unusual in plant forums.

[Arnold]

Martin

Thanks it does look better. 
I think taking photos in bright light is most often bad.

[David Pilling]

I read a book by a renowned photographer, who said "if the light is not right go back another day". He specialised in Cathedrals, not so easy with flowers.

The usual trick with flowers is to take the exposure value on the camera down a few notches. That stops bright flowers being over exposed. As long as you can keep things from under or over exposure they can be rescued with the image processing software.

Indifference is worse than criticism, and offering advice to make things right is icing on the cake.

[Diane Whitehead]

My main problem with photographing flowers is wind.

[David Pilling]

Wind - yeah that's true - when I started I found people used clamp type devices to hold plants still whilst photographed. I'd end up moving plants into the greenhouse to keep them still. Guess you can always use a faster exposure, newer cameras are more sensitive and hence faster. Dial up the ISO number.

[Robert_Parks]

Yes, lessee what to order for the weather: light overcast so bright without direct sun, low wind since autofocus can only do so much, and no other foul weather unless you want that effect in the photography.

Be attentive to your background, that affects both the final image, and (assuming you are using auto metering) the exposure of the subject. 

Your camera makes a difference, nowadays the programming probably more than the actual lens...besides my real cameras (Nikon DSLR and fancy point and shoot), my cell phones have varied in flower picture quality over the years, the current one does pretty well, and being able to go to manual is important, if still more cumbersome than on an actual camera. 

In digital, film is cheap, and sometimes you can get away with taking lots of shots to get a clear one...although it took a LOT of shots to get the Ixias.

Probably the best thing is having a "camera" with some level of manual control.

Robert
in San Francisco with bright diffuse light under the fog, but a gusty breeze to keep everything but the short Pelargoniums hard to focus on

[Martin Bohnet]

In digital, film is cheap, and sometimes you can get away with taking lots of shots to get a clear one...although it took a LOT of shots to get the Ixias.

This. I always have my camera in burst mode, 3-5 shots in a row.

Probably the best thing is having a "camera" with some level of manual control.

definitively. Algorithms tend to have a bad understanding of what you want to show. Though I do use an automatic pushing up the ISO from 200 to 1600 with decreasing light to keep up 1/80th seconds exposure, Which I feel I can keep somewhat steady.

I've split this topic. maybe a move to general OT?