 Frank P. Luongo |
Need Critique I like shooting flowers and occasionally against a black background. I shot this white Gerbera with a black background. I need just a general critique aside from need for cropping. I appreciate your feedback as it is a necessary learning tool. Frank
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chrisbudny.com - Chris Budny Contact Chris Budny Chris Budny's Gallery |
Hi Frank... A few questions, to frame any critique others might give... A) Are you using a tripod when you do these shots? Or are they mostly hand-held? B) Are you familiar with the exposure compensation feature/setting on your Rebel? C) Do you have a "preset" idea in mind when shooting these shots, for what you want in the final result? ie, soft and dreamy, or maybe selective focus, or maybe full front-to-back razor sharpness? D) For this shot, do you recall how far the camera body (not front of lens, necessarily) was from the flower?
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Nicholas Semo |
To me...on my screen, it looks underexposed. Nick.
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Bob Cammarata |
It looks under-exposed to me too, by at least a stop, maybe even a stop and a half. The biggest problem with programmed exposure modes like TV (a.k.a., Shutter Priority Mode), is that they tend to assume that everything defaults to a "neutral grey" exposure. Properly exposing a white flower against a black background is kind'a tricky. Success depends heavily upon the light which is falling upon those bright petals. Typically, in bright sunlight, the photographer needs to get in really close and meter the brightest parts of the flower petals, then over-compensate by opening the aperture two stops beyond the meter reading (or, by keeping the aperture the same and selecting a shutter speed two stops slower). This will render a much brighter flower...a more accurate naked-eye view. In diffused light, such as on an overcast day, one stop over (or perhaps one and a half) would suffice to render those white petals in their true brilliance. When we depend upon our machines to decide what is correct, more often than not we are limited to only what they perceive and what they think might be best. Too often, our results end up being not what we expected.
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doug Nelson |
This work is obviously important to you. It is important enough to shoot in RAW, and to get the softwware you need to process RAW images. Secondly, learn the "expose-to-the-right" technique. The procedure explained in the previous post is another way of doing the same thing. Check out your histogram after the shot. You should see your highlights almost against the right side but not "trainwreck" or pile up. WHen you open a properly exposed image in a RAW processor (I use the one in CS 2) you will be able to move the "exposure" slider to eliminate any highlight blowout. Of course, in this shot, highlight blowout is not even an issue.
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chrisbudny.com - Chris Budny Contact Chris Budny Chris Budny's Gallery |
...I wonder if Frank isn't set up to get notices that we've replied to his question...
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