Late Spring Collection

[ScoutR]

It's really up to you to descide how the scene is presented. If the scene is purely reflective (ie no specular reflections or direct light sources - eg back lighting) then you'll only need about 4 stops to cover it. Easy way to do that is to spot meter the brightest portion and then add or subtract EC until that brightest point is exactly 2 stops over the centre (neutral gray) point. Guaranteed to work, or your money back

OK, using the shot below lets see if I understand this.




This is shot #2 above as it came from the camera with default LR adjustments, resized and converted to jpg.
The flower is actually quite small approx 1.5"
The background is white matt board
The sun is behind and to the left but filtered through a large shade tree that is behind and above the flowerbed.

Here's how I see it. Let me know if and where I am getting it wrong.

1. I'm thinking that this is purley reflective lighting. If the matt board was not behind the flower, I would have had backlighting issues with the sun coming through the tree branches
2. I spot metered on the main flower. I'm not sure if the flower would be considered lighter or darker than medium gray, but I'm thinking any part of the main flower would be lighter than medium gray which would make me think I should have +EC, but not the full 2 stops. Anyway I tried +EC for this but kept getting blinkies so ended up with no EC. The result is that the background is too dark (in spots) and the flower is washed out.
3. I suppose one problem could be that there was light filtering through the leaves in the tree and spilling onto the white matt board which caused the dark patches on the white background. I still do not understand why the flower is washed out though. If I am understanding this correctly and if I metered correctly then without EC applied the flower should actually be too dark. Unless the flower is actually darker than medium gray?????
4. I'm going to experiment, but based on what you said above, I think I should have metered the matt board and then dialed in +2??? It seems more natural to meter on the subject though.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. If I'm way off base and it's too hard to straigten me out, just tell me where you would meter for a shot with these conditions and what EC you would expect to have to dial in to get a white background and a properly exposed (or recoverable) flower.

Wendy

[taken]

i like these pics .....they are different. yes a little bit underexposure or over exposure or some tweaks in pshop can surely make this pics lookdifferent.but then again,this is how the pics are meant be to seen, according to the photographer who shot them...

[ScoutR]

Thanks taken, I appreciate the vote of confidence. Glad you like them, I do to, but they are a litte faded.

[Colin Southern]

OK, using the shot below lets see if I understand this.

Hi Wendy,

Just a quick question to clarify something for me. Was the sun shining through the matt board at all, or just on to it from (somewhere on) the camera side of the board?

[ScoutR]

The sun was behind the matt board and shining in spots through a tree, so it must have leaked onto the matt board from behind and above not from in front. Hope that makes sense

[ScoutR]

Correction to post above. I should have said the light must have spilled over the top of the matt board from above and behind as it filtered through the leaves in the tree. The matt board is quite thick. It did not come through the matt board.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Wendy,

Don't ya just hate it when you're 10 minutes into a reply and you bounce the "back" button on the mouse against the side of the keyboard and lose the lot!

Ok - once again, from the top ...

If the light isn't shining through the backdrop - and if the backdrop isn't shiny to the point where there's glare - then it's safe to consider it reflective, and thus the dynamic range between the brightest bits and darkest bits (with detail -- ie "not shadows") won't be more than 4 stops. ie no more than 2 stops above and below an arbitary medium gray point between the two extremes.

So with regards to spot metering, you could ...

1. Spot meter a black area (which the camera will expose as middle gray) and then apply 2 stops of -EC to return the reading to the black that it should expose as. In the case of the flowers that's difficult because there aren't any reliable black areas.

2. Spot-meter an area that's EXACTLY medium gray and not have to make any corrections - but that's hard too because there's nothing that leaps out of the scene that shouts "Hey - meter me - I'm a medium gray"

3. Spot meter anything, and then make the appropriate correction - but that's just as hard as #2 above

4. Spot meter the brightest bit (which will be dropped 2 stops to a medium gray) and then apply +EC of 2 stops to pop it up to a highlight again - the easiest in my opinion.

Easier still however is probably to just use a metering mode that'll look at the brightest and darkest bits, and aim for the middle for you.

I think that people often confuse metering modes ... basically evaluative (Canon) or Matrix (Nikon) -v- Partial -v- Centre-weighted -v- spot is a way to tell the camera which parts of the scene are important in terms of exposure - BUT - (and as you can see, it's a BIG butt), just because you've told it what parts of the composition are important, doesn't mean that it can now magically get that portion of the scene exposed correctly - all you're telling it to do is expose it as a (you guessed it) medium gray. The reason it gets it right with evaluative / matrix is that most times the scene WILL average out to a medium gray - but the smaller the area you're looking at then the smaller the variation in the lighting is likely to be, and the greater the chance that it'll get it wrong. So as a rule of thumb, the smaller the area you're looking at the more you're going to need to make corrections for what it's pointing at.

So if you get the exposure right then you've got a great starting point - however in post processing you'll usually have to stretch the tonal range by a stop or two because monitors can display around 5 or 6 stops of dynamic range (more than paper) which is why images require different treatment for printing -v- display on a monitor (and a large part of why images on the screen will NEVER look exactly the same when printed).

Sorry to get so technical - but if you can master this then you can "rule the world" in terms of getting great exposures In summary, if you spot meter the brightest bit - up-shift it 2 stops - then you'll not get any blinkies and have a pretty good baseline to work from. If you over-expose the scene )like you did with the above shots) (but not to the point where you have blinkies) then that's still OK - but - you'll need to make adjustments in PP to bring the blacks back from being a medium to dark gray (which you didn't do). Spot metering is actually pretty cool because on manual mode you can then tell EXACTLY how anything you point the camera at is going to expose.

PS: Others have mentioned doing the corrections to your images with curves - this is also dealing to the same areas, but in a slightly different way (although personally I won't touch curves until I have by black & white clipping points set, and gamma (mid-tones) adjusted, but that's just me).

[carregwen]

Hi Wendy,
Don't ya just hate it when you're 10 minutes into a reply and you bounce the "back" button on the mouse against the side of the keyboard and lose the lot!

If you know it's going to be a long reply, cut and paste the contents at regular intervals into a Word document or text file and save it. Then, you can always get it back. It only takes a few seconds.

[Colin Southern]

If you know it's going to be a long reply, cut and paste the contents at regular intervals into a Word document or text file and save it. Then, you can always get it back. It only takes a few seconds.

Yeah. Another way is for me to just post it somewhere out of sight and then edit it a few times - and then just move it when I'm done (good protection against power-cuts since I don't have a UPS on my home PC).

Usually it's fine of course, although I have done the fastest select/copy in the world sometimes when I hit the post button and it just "hangs" there for too many seconds!

[Colin Southern]

Just a quick demo of putting some of the above into practice ...

I took a closer look at this great shot - in any image there is usually something completely black, and something completely white ... in this case the darkest region was already level 22 (the brightest - excluding the border is also well less that 255, but in this type of image that's ok) - so look what happens when I force those pixels down to 0 and stretch everything else from there (inc making a small adjustment at the highlight end). Quick sharpen and ...

[Dave Humphries]

(good protection against power-cuts since I don't have a UPS on my home PC).

I knew there was another reason why I use a laptop - the built in UPS feature (aka 'the battery')

Usually it's fine of course, although I have done the fastest select/copy in the world sometimes when I hit the post button and it just "hangs" there for too many seconds!

Oh, you mean Ctrl+A > Ctrl+C with one hand and three fingers
Do you find when that happens (excessive hanging), you sometimes/often get a duplicate post?

I'm just off to read 'from the top'

See ya later,

[Donald]

Spot metering is actually pretty cool because on manual mode you can then tell EXACTLY how anything you point the camera at is going to expose.

Colin
You said something similar in one of your posts at the time, or just after, I joined C in C ... and it has stuck. As you will see from my EXIFs, 99.99% of what I do is in manual mode, spot-metered. In a post yesterday evening, I again made reference to my discovering Michael Freeman's writing and how much it has taught me.

Freeman writes about the Zone System created by Adams and others, pointing out that whilst it was developed for a, "... highly specific kind of photography that few people ever practiced ..." its use today is in terms of helping us think about and assess potential images. And that's where I link it with spot metering. And there's a connection here with the 'thinking in Black & White' thing.

If I spot meter something and know that that's giving me the mid-grey exposure, I can then think my way (or, try and think my way) through the rest of the scene with reference to that reading and 'see' how other parts of the scene are going to expose.

[carregwen]

Wendy,

In terms of processing this was about the best I could do. I just adjusted the clarity, contrast and exposure in RAW. I think things could have been improved at the shooting stage. That background board is rather dull looking. Perhaps if it had a separate light on it to illuminate it a bit more it might look better. This subject might have worked better on black.

As for the composition - there are eight main flower heads (apart from the central area of buds), but none of them seem to me to be wholly in focus. You could have used f/16 instead of f/8. I know that normally you may have parts of a flower OOF, but the fact that you have eight in partial focus makes it hard to visually fix on a particular spot. If that makes sense. You clipped the petal at point (B). I would have tried to get the whole thing in, or done a more definite crop. The flower head at point (A) is quite OOF and is directly behind another flower, which spoils the look of that flower. I would have cut the back-ground flower and stem off completely - if you use a small DIY knife it does it quite cleanly so you cant see anything. The other alternative would be to just select one flower-head and shoot that, but you would probably need a macro for that.

Thanks for letting me edit it. Sorry, I couldn't do any better. Maybe Colin can?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Colin,

I'd like to rule the world too, but not sure I can apply this to shooting moving wildlife like birds in flight against blue sky, clouds or trees, all changing within seconds as I pan to follow them - but that's a different problem for a different thread, let's not distract from the subject at hand (as I already have once today sorry )

and thus the dynamic range between the brightest bits and darkest bits (with detail -- ie "not shadows") won't be more than 4 stops. ie no more than 2 stops above and below an arbitary medium gray point between the two extremes.

So if you get the exposure right then you've got a great starting point - however in post processing you'll usually have to stretch the tonal range by a stop or two because monitors can display around 5 or 6 stops of dynamic range ~

So let me get this straight; if the sun is directly shing on a white petal, but we also want to see detail on say dark and shaded leaves, surely that's more than 4 stops DR isn't it?

Is the 4 stops:
a) difference between lit white petal to unlit white petal?
b) lit white petal to lit darkest leaf?
c) lit white petal to unlit (i.e. shaded) darkest leaf?

I feel I am asking a daft question and should know the answer already

Sorry to get so technical - but if you can master this then you can "rule the world" in terms of getting great exposures In summary, if you spot meter the brightest bit - up-shift it 2 stops - then you'll not get any blinkies and have a pretty good baseline to work from. If you over-expose the scene (like you did with the above shots) (but not to the point where you have blinkies) then that's still OK - but - you'll need to make adjustments in PP to bring the blacks back from being a medium to dark gray (which you didn't do). Spot metering is actually pretty cool because on manual mode you can then tell EXACTLY how anything you point the camera at is going to expose.

If one exposes to the right, doesn't one ensure that the brighest part of a scene is almost in the blinkies?

I have been doing that, but agree, some of my shots do look over exposed - is that just a subjective thing? i.e. that although there is nothing in shot that is peak white, if we make something pale grey almost 'hit the clippers' and hence everything else is shifted up the scale, it looks wrong?
Should one never the less expose this way, then bring it down in PP to minimise noise?

Thanks,

[Colin Southern]

I knew there was another reason why I use a laptop - the built in UPS feature (aka 'the battery')

It worked well for me (well right up until the time I gave my laptop to my #1 daughter). I've got a lot of clients who leave their batteries installed and the units constantly plugged in which totally stuffs the battery though

Oh, you mean Ctrl+A > Ctrl+C with one hand and three fingers
Do you find when that happens (excessive hanging), you sometimes/often get a duplicate post?

I usually just use the mouse and then ctrl-c. Haven't struck the duplicate post thing for a while - but what I have been noticing a bit of recently is having to click something TWICE for it to take effect.

[Colin Southern]

If I spot meter something and know that that's giving me the mid-grey exposure, I can then think my way (or, try and think my way) through the rest of the scene with reference to that reading and 'see' how other parts of the scene are going to expose.

Hi Donald,

Exactly. Once i've dialed in the exposure I think I need I can just watch the meter as I point to clouds / fences / roads / trees etc and know exactly how they're going to expose.

[Colin Southern]

So let me get this straight; if the sun is directly shing on a white petal, but we also want to see detail on say dark and shaded leaves, surely that's more than 4 stops DR isn't it?

Hi Dave,

Just a quick frame of reference; Ever seen a black dog? - nobody has! Trick question of sorts, but the point I'm trying (read "struggling") to make is that if the dog - or grooms suit - or road really was black then wouldn't be able to see it no matter how much light we threw at it, but the reality is that even things we think of as being "black" actually reflect quite a bit of light - even to the point where I could shot you a portrait with a white background that was actually shot against a black backdrop ... if you nuke it with enough power (which I've done) then it reflects so much light that it blows the exposure.

So what I'm referring to is the ratio of light reflected from a white source compared to a black source - white and black pieces of paper are probably the easiest to visualise in a test setup, and probably a bride in a white dress standing next to a groom in a black suit is probably a good "real world" example. Keep in mind that none of this involves shadows - but having just said that, the average camera will capture about 3 stops over the medium gray point before clipping occurs (even more with highlight tone priority) - so your blacks sit about 5 stops down from maximum - which leaves about 7 stops for shadow detail (assuming a typical 12 stop DR of most modern DSLRs @ base ISO - assuming a RAW capture, of course.

So to answer the question, "b" is closest, but it'll only be 4 stops if the petals are white & black, which is unlikely.

If one exposes to the right, doesn't one ensure that the brighest part of a scene is almost in the blinkies?

Yes. From a "capture as much detail as possible" this is correct, but I'm starting to realize that ETTR is starting to cause a few problems for some people; The problem is that the camera can capture a lot more than 4 stops - and at least 3 - maybe 4 of those are ABOVE the middle gray point so when exposing to the right in RAW - with HTP on you can capture a wonderful amount in noise-free info, but the problem is if it's only a 4-stop reflective scene then you end up with the blacks exposing almost as mid-tones - which have to be corrected in post-processing - BUT - the problem is that they often don't quite slide as easily into place as one might think. You might think it would sinply be a case of raising the black clipping point and perhaps adjusting the brightness - but in reality I've found that it can be difficult to get things looking exactly right. I have my suspicions that this is due in part to some of the high midtones to highlights being captured in a non-linear area of the sensors response curve (made worse by HTP which effectively compresses the last stop of highlights), but I haven't proven it one way or the other. Moral of the story - "if the scene is purely reflective and thus has a relatively low DR, don't be too paranoid about exposing to the right as you're not going to have noise issues, but you may well have difficulties pushing and pulling parts of the tonal range to get them right".

Does that kinda answer the question (eventually!)?

[Dave Humphries]

Does that kinda answer the question (eventually!)?

Yes thanks, however, I've already sat here far too long this morning (see "The problem" thread), so I'll mull it over and try it out.

I had a day's shooting yesterday with (flying) white birds and dark birds, white ones OK, but dark ones tending to underexpose for their undersides (in shadow and not so translucent) because I'm still using centre weighted Aperture priority and EC (when I remember). I think I need to "raise my game" - anyway, we can deal with that in the new thread (when I have PP'd some tonight/tomorrow) rather than hijack Wendy's thread.

I leave HTP off these days for more predictable results

Thanks for the answer, it was just what I needed,

[ScoutR]

From Colin: Easier still however is probably to just use a metering mode that'll look at the brightest and darkest bits, and aim for the middle for you.

OK, If I used Matrix metering on the shot below, I would expect to have to increase EC because most of the shot is lighter than medium grey. (remember the background is actually white) probably not by the full 2 stops, but what i would do is to increase till I got blinkies and then go down 1/3 from there. Yes, No?
On the other hand if I had the same shot with a black background, 3/4 or more of the shot would be darker than medium grey and I would have to decrease EC by close to but not quite 2 stops. Yes, No, Close????



Wendy

[ScoutR]

Colin
You said something similar in one of your posts at the time, or just after, I joined C in C ... and it has stuck. As you will see from my EXIFs, 99.99% of what I do is in manual mode, spot-metered. In a post yesterday evening, I again made reference to my discovering Michael Freeman's writing and how much it has taught me.

Freeman writes about the Zone System created by Adams and others, pointing out that whilst it was developed for a, "... highly specific kind of photography that few people ever practiced ..." its use today is in terms of helping us think about and assess potential images. And that's where I link it with spot metering. And there's a connection here with the 'thinking in Black & White' thing.

If I spot meter something and know that that's giving me the mid-grey exposure, I can then think my way (or, try and think my way) through the rest of the scene with reference to that reading and 'see' how other parts of the scene are going to expose.

Ahaaa! This is what I am trying to do. I need to learn to see middle grey though, and then figure out zones from there as to what is lighter or darker and by how much and how many stops it equates to. I really like the idea of spot metering and having the control to decide for myself how I want the scene to look.
I have Freeman's "Perfect Exposure" but (obviously) have not made the time to read it yet. I don't have "Thinking in Black & White" but if that is where this information lies, then that's the one I need to get.

Wendy