Detail in red?

[AB26]

Hi,

After a long battle trying to find a recipe to shoot a red flower I think I found a way of doing it.

This image was shot in Jpeg, downloaded, sharpened, resized, sharpened and posted. Pretty much SOOC. It is the first time I have captured this specific red flower looking pretty much like a red flower with detail in it.

Camera set to Jpeg, 1/10sec, f8, Program mode – Manual, ISO 100, Manual WB, Exposure comp. -0.67.
Not clipping the red channel used to be my biggest problem.
What do you see on your screen? Is it red or does it have a tint in it? Can you see detail in this resized image? Is it sharp enough?

Thank you for looking and all comments and critique always appreciated.

[RichardTaylor]

The lowest flower looks good on my uncalibrated monitor.

[Shadowman]

It's hard to compare with what you see as red, but this has a reddish-orange appearance to my eyes. There is detail in the image.

[MrB]

Looks a good colour to me Andre and there is detail there. As John has written, it is slightly on the orange side of red - the RGB values show a small amount of green mixed with the red - so it depends how pure you want the red to be, but that doesn't matter to me as I haven't seen the real flower.

Philip

[bnnrcn]

It looks fine Andre,I agree with above comments about colour

[Manfred M]

Andre - nice shot; the detail at the front is sharp and things soften up at the back; with the f/8 driving the DoF. The flowers definitely have an orange-red tone, rather than a pure red on my profiled screen.

[IzzieK]

Yep orangy-red to me...like the details at the front and left flowers...nice shot!

[NorthernFocus]

You clearly succeeded in protecting the red from clipping and captured good detail. Maybe a bit underexposed if anything. A bit more work on it might bring out more detail in the veins in the petals. Hard to comment on the accuracy of the color relative to the original but who cares? It is a rich red and as others have said leaning more towards orange than magenta.

On edit: By "who cares" I'm not trying to sound obtuse. Simply means that if the photographer is happy with the color, we don't have the original to compare to so can't really comment on accuracy of the color. Hope that makes sense.

[deetheturk]

Nice capture Andre,well done in keeping the detail as it can be a real pain of a colour to work with!

[outwithmycamera]

Good detail I think, like others not quite what I think of as red red a bit orangy (yes, I am sure that is a word). I am curious why you aren't shooting raw where you will have much better chance to handle color balance?

[Wavelength]

Fine color; enough details; almost fully within the frame....
Regards

[Stagecoach]

Andre,

It looks good to me, detail (where expected), sharpness and colour.

As for the colour I would call it an orangey red but would also expect the colour to appear different for the flower with different lighting throughout the day. Or as already said, who cares about the accuracy, unless you are producing seed catalouge images

Grahame

[Ken Curtis]

Hi Andre. I looked at the histogram using the levels adjustment in Photoshop. It looks like this.



It really shows the red as being isolated from the darker background. I then adjusted the pointers until the histogram looked like this.



I believe it brightened the flower a bit and I do see a good bit of detail in the foreground flower.

[Inkanyezi]

I wouldn't bother to try adjusting that image any more. It is necessary to have the red sufficiently low to retain contrast and structure in the most saturated parts of the petals, and brightening will inevitably make it lose detail due to decreased contrast.

I think the issue of exposure is correctly handled, and the only thing that I don't find pleasing image-wise, is that lighting is rather soft as well as frontal. I would have liked to try more directional lighting, maybe a smaller light source, to bring forth even more detail, now that the over-saturation issue has been resolved. But that is a different image.

[AB26]

Hi ALL,

Thank you very much for looking and all the comments and advise. It is always much appreciated.

The flower is an orangey-red when compared to pure red. On my screen the colour is pretty close to the real thing. I am never sure of what you folks see on a screen as I am using up to four different screens. Two Samsung screens a LG and an ASUS LED.

I am very happy if you can see detail in the flower as I have really had a hard time to get that flower showing detail in the petals.

The next challenge is to shoot that same flower in much brighter light, trying to retain detail in the petals.

[AB26]

I am curious why you aren't shooting raw where you will have much better chance to handle color balance?

Hi Chris,

I would be curious as to why I should be shooting RAW if I can get the colour right in camera. The best way of learning to master camera settings is shooting Jpeg.

There are no rules as to shooting Jpeg or RAW. My camera has both functions and I am eager to master all functions my camera offers. There are advantages in both RAW and Jpeg shooting and not being able to use both functions equally well, limits the possibility of getting the shot looking like I want it to look like.

My ultimate goal is capturing images that I need not “fix” in PP but only using post software to enhance my images. It is however, a personal choice. My personal experience is that I shoot RAW whenever I have doubt about the outcome but when I know what I am doing (or at least I think I know what I am doing) I shoot Jpeg.

You should try Robin’s suggested exercise: Shoot like you are shooting on film. Only 36 exposures. No live view or any chimping. Fixed ISO. Try shooting Jpeg. After the shoot you download and see how much time you have to spend in the “darkroom” to make your images look like what you intended it to look like.

[MrB]

Hi Chris,

I would be curious as to why I should be shooting RAW if I can get the colour right in camera. The best way of learning to master camera settings is shooting Jpeg.

There are no rules as to shooting Jpeg or RAW. My camera has both functions and I am eager to master all functions my camera offers. There are advantages in both RAW and Jpeg shooting and not being able to use both functions equally well, limits the possibility of getting the shot looking like I want it to look like.

My ultimate goal is capturing images that I need not “fix” in PP but only using post software to enhance my images. It is however, a personal choice. My personal experience is that I shoot RAW whenever I have doubt about the outcome but when I know what I am doing (or at least I think I know what I am doing) I shoot Jpeg.

+1

Philip

[Clive Kirby]

Hi
Just swapped from the laptop to my full screen. Looks pretty good to me. Ever so slightly orangey, but if that is what the original was - great. Detail looks fine, subtle but discernible. Thanks for posting - I struggle with reds and find the best way forward is to concentrate on the red histogram read out on the camera to avoid clipping. I tend to shoot in raw and jpeg so I have the back up if I'm not satisfied with the colour balance.
regards
Clive

[AB26]

Hi
Just swapped from the laptop to my full screen. Looks pretty good to me. Ever so slightly orangey, but if that is what the original was - great. Detail looks fine, subtle but discernible. Thanks for posting - I struggle with reds and find the best way forward is to concentrate on the red histogram read out on the camera to avoid clipping. I tend to shoot in raw and jpeg so I have the back up if I'm not satisfied with the colour balance.
regards
Clive

Thank you Clive.

The colours I struggled with are red, pink and purple. With this (red flower) shot I set my camera to Auto Contrast and Auto Saturation, allowing the camera to “decide” on contrast and saturation. The WB I set to Kelvin and controlled the WB. I might be barking up the wrong tree here but it seems to me it is all in getting the WB correct. Even with pink and purple the colour is much more natural and I find the red channel does not “clip” so easily when controlling WB.

This shot is of a pinkish-purplish rose. I used to battled with this one as well. In this shot I got the colour very close to the real thing. With the light changing the colour also changes dramatically. This shot took me around 30 minutes to capture as there was an ever so slight breeze and I had to wait for the right moment for the flower not to move at all as I was shooting at F8 and 1/10sec.
Same settings for both shots except WB that changed from 4500K (red flower) to 4800K (pink rose). Reason for the changing K temp. is the difference in location of the two flowers.

Shooting RAW you can do with WB whatever you wish to do.